Ashes on the Face of the Sun
by STEVEN ROBESON
Summary: Humankind of the not-too-distant future has found it's way to the planets...Now they may have found their bloodline among them...
1. Chapter 1

_"__**Ashes On The Face of the Sun**__"_

by Steven James Robeson

A Short Story Based Upon the "Re-Imagined"

**"Battlestar Galactica"**

by Messers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick

Based upon the novel

**"Saga of a Star World"**

and the original television series

**"Battlestar Galactica"**

by Glen A. Larsen

Except for those intellectual properties of the above stated persons, this story is copyrighted©2010 by Steven James Robeson and is protected under the laws of the United States of America.

* * *

CHAPTER ONE

_Conference Room Bravo_

_United States Lunar Installation Alan B. Sheppard_

_Storey Musgrave Center_

_22 May 2093_

_05:15 UTC_

"…So what exactly is it I am supposed to be looking at?" Major General Jim Stevens, U.S. Aerospace Forces, assistant commander of USLI-Sheppard , was more than a little miffed at having been asked to come to the conference room at this hour of the morning. There was no fire, the installation's seven domes were intact, and to the best of his knowledge, no one of any rank had died since he went to bed only three hours ago. The tone of his voice reflected his displeasure.

The lab-coated scientists at the end of the conference table nervously shuffled several table-top sized charts and documents and spoke anxiously amongst themselves for a moment. The tenor of their own conversation was rising slowly until one of them, the more senior amongst them, stood at his seat. The scientists quieted and watched as their colleague rose.

"Uh…General…we've witnessed something, well, unusual, around and on the planet Mercury." The elderly scientist looked over each shoulder to the seven others seated with him. One of them, an Asian woman, nodded her head towards him and then towards the general with that 'look' like one would give a playmate when trying to break the news to a parent that they had just sent a baseball through the neighbor's closed bedroom window.

"Doctor Minerovic, I can appreciate that you and your colleagues have found something that is no doubt news-worthy, especially in light of the fact that you have your hands on the first multi-billion dollar observatory on the moon. But unless you found gold, oil or a new football franchise on Mercury, what couldn't wait until a more reasonable hour to hold this briefing?" The general's tone was becoming more agitated by the minute.

With that, the scientist's face grew even redder, and it was easy to see that he was getting more flustered by the minute. The general was unarmed, and to the best of anyone's knowledge, he'd never been a combat warrior before, but that didn't minimize his overwhelming presence in the room.

The doctor stood, almost transfixed for a moment, unable to make his mouth move in a way that allowed the thoughts in his brain to come out coherently. He had thought to try and rehearse his presentation earlier, however his associate's rush to announce their findings left him little time to prepare.

The general sat quietly for a few seconds while the elderly physicist stood anxiously at the end of the table. The general contemplated the scientist's disheveled appearance and almost obsessive-compulsive movement of his hands from his hips, to his sides, and back again. Still, the general knew that the greatest minds of past generations had looked like they slept under bridges, yet they landed men on the moon, nearly cured cancer, and managed to pretty much stop famine.

"OK..an anomaly. On Mercury? Or just near it?." In that moment, the general had an epiphany, and realized that perhaps it was his own presence that had the good doctor at odds with himself. The general took a deep breath and pushed back in his chair, actually allowing himself to slide back in it a bit. Afterall, he was up now, and he might as well hear what he had to say. "And how does this affect us here, almost sixty million miles away…?"

The Asian woman sitting next to Dr. Minerovic abruptly reached into a valise on the table and handed the doctor a dog-eared note pad and several sheets of paper. He took them and only acknowledged her with a smile and a nod.

"Well…as you may know, General, we've never had a really good view of Mercury except for the Mariner mission of 1974 and the Messenger mission that was supposed to map the surface in 2011. That satellite reached Mercury and successfully inserted into Mercurian orbit, but mysteriously disappeared after only four orbits. It went around the far side on it's fourth pass and never came back around."

"I remember the reports, Doctor. It was presumed that a solar flare or a minor coronal mass ejection swamped the bird and it was lost." The doctor was taken aback by the soldier's sudden interjection on a subject that he assumed the warrior would have no knowledge of. He was both impressed and embarrassed that he'd stereotyped the General so. He hoped that the general didn't make a similar assumption about him.

"Yes, that's correct! Yes Sir!" The doctor suddenly became more animated. Perhaps the general's demonstration of familiarity on the mission put him at ease. No matter. "Now here…" he said pulling several pages from the stack of papers he held "…are the mappings from the Mariner 10 mission in 1974. Well, it wasn't a true _mapping_ mission, but we did get many fine shots of the surface, which brings me to this…"

The doctor set the majority of the papers to one side and then spread a larger-than-usual terrain surface picture out on the middle of the expansive conference table. He turned the page one way, then back another, until he got the map at the angle he wanted. "Here, right here…see this small plain between these two craters?"

The general scooted forward in his chair, then rose to lean over the table. "OK, I see it, but as far as I can tell, this might just be a picture of the dark side of this moon for all I know. Craters…ridges…dust…So what?"

"I'm getting to that…Uhh…Maybe I better let Doctor Park explain this part…"

Kim Li Park was shocked at hearing her name. The slender and beautiful Asian woman who'd been handing the other doctor his papers suddenly looked up at him in a panic. "What do you mean I should…." Her voice trailed off as the doctor leaned over to whisper something in her ear. The general could only see the doctor's animated hand gestures, and the Asian woman's frequent nodding.

Then the doctor stood back and motioned to the woman. She turned to the general and cleared her own throat a couple of times, sheepishly grinned, then started to speak

"This all started two weeks ago. The telescope had just come on line, and we were testing various combinations of filters that we plan to use when ever we need to make solar or near-solar observations. To establish a reference, we chose to use Mercury's phases to determine pre and post filter insertion effectiveness since it was just coming into a visible phase. We were watching the monitor with the planet in real-time, switching between two filters, when we saw this…" The comely woman reached across the table and found the remote control for the conference room's video monitor. She held the device up, seemingly aiming it over the general's shoulder, and pushed a button. A multi-paneled wall behind the officer suddenly rotated, exposing a viewing screen.

The room darkened somewhat, albeit not completely. The young scientist again aimed the controller at the wall and pushed another button. The wall came alive with video from the telescope's observations.

They all watched for a moment as the position of the small solar planet seemingly shifted in the middle of the viewer, no doubt the telescope itself being shifted slightly to center-up the target. After a few seconds of watching the small orb seemingly wander in the center of the shot, it settled down to a relatively stable view in the picture.

There it was, the planet Mercury, centered in the middle of the screen. Looking at it on the viewer, the planet was notable for being bigger than other distant objects in the near-view of space, the Sun being at an angle to the camera that put it well to the right of the viewer and therefore out of the view. That angle, plus the distances involved, gave the viewer the sense that Mercury was hardly anything more than a reverse letter 'C" no bigger than a peanut in the vast darkness of space.

With that, the view suddenly changed, with the bright orb in the center of the viewer suddenly taking on a ghostly pallor. "Here we switched in the first filter to get our density and luminosity readings. It was then that this appeared…" From the left of the viewer, a small, relatively faster moving object, suddenly appeared. Everyone in the room, including the general, slid to the edge of their chairs as if that few centimeters of movement might provide them with a greater appreciation for the object that had appeared. "Had we not switched in the filters at just that moment, both the over-glare from the sun itself and the reflected light of Mercury might have masked the object's transit" the newly outted doctor said.

"You have spectral analysis of the object, Doctor Park?" The general's tone was now softened and quizzical.

"No Sir. The spectrum analyzer for this camera and telescope haven't been installed yet…however it probably wouldn't have mattered."

"And why's that, Doctor Park?" At hearing her name, the young scientist wasn't so sure that having her face _and _name known to the assistant administrator was necessarily a good thing.

"Because of this, Sir…" She pushed a button on the controller, and the video began racing through hours of observations in only a few seconds time. Even without any enhancements, it was easy to see that each subsequent approach of the object brought it closer to Mercury's thin veil of an atmosphere as the phase of the sun changed rapidly across the face of the planet. In the lower right corner of the video, the elapsed time was spinning at a break-neck speed. Then, seconds later, the object disappeared behind the planet, to not return again.

"Where'd it go…?!?!" asked the general with renewed enthusiasm.

"That's the interesting part, General…keep watching" said Park. The video continued to run at break neck speed, whole hours elapsing in mere seconds. As it did, the planet continued to bring the 'dark side' of it's disk into view. Suddenly, the video stopped. "Look here…" continued the young physicist.

She stepped out from around the chair that had been a sort of crutch to her the whole time she'd been standing. Moving up to the front of the room, and just behind the general's seat, she took out a laser-pointer, and drew a circle around what looked to be a smear ending in a smudge on the screen.

"Look familiar?" asked the young Park.

The general leaned back in his chair. Yes, he'd seen pictures like that all-too-often in his career. Usually after some hot dog had taken liberties with his or her plane, but sometimes after some avoidable maintenance faux pas that resulted in an accident.

"A crash site…"

* * *

CHAPTER TWO

_Aboard the Colonial Fleet Battlestar "Galactica"_

_Over 150,000 Earth Years Ago_

_In Geosynchronous Orbit over Africa_

Samuel T. Anders monitored the preparation for the departure of the last Viper from the only remaining launch tube on the port side of the great capitol ship. His electronically extended senses could actually feel the tension of the shuttlecock of the catapult against the launch bar of the Viper's forward landing gear. He checked to make sure that the blast door behind the Viper's engines was up and secure. Not that it mattered for the safety of a crew that was no longer aboard, but rather the launch tube safety overrides would prevent depressurizing the tube unless the door was up and sealed. More than one Viper had missed a sortie because the blast door wouldn't close.

Anders watched The Old Man in the cockpit of the Viper via a closed circuit television camera in the launch tube. He zoomed in, hoping to catch a last minute glimpse of the last human face he'd ever see. But alas, it wasn't to be. The tube depressurized, and Bill 'Husker' Adama, Admiral and Commander of the Colonial Fleet, depressed the 'turbo' button under his right thumb. The sublight engines of the Viper instantly spun up to a thunderous roar. Anders could see the warplane straining against its restraints and saw Adama's helmet take position in the headrest. And when he saw he had full military power, Adama squeezed the trigger on the right hand-stick controller. The response was immediate and gratifying. The Viper traveled the distance of the tube in a second and flung itself into the Heavens. Now, with the exception of Anders himself, the Galactica was now deserted..

Anders switched from the closed circuit TV viewer to the ship's close-aboard DRADIS system. Not only did he detect the just-launched Viper along with the scores of other ships of the now abandoned fleet, but he could detect the telemetry coming from the Viper. Why Adama had it turned it on, he didn't know. Decades of old habit, no doubt. But 'on' it was, and he could tell that Adama had immediately throttled back the engines as he cleared the tube.

On the DRADIS, Anders watched as the tiny fighter executed a hard wingover, and then proceed down the left side of the great warship. Adama deftly weaved the Viper around the port landing pod of the Galactica, being careful to pass under the ship's massive sublight engine exhaust plumes as he rounded her stern.

Coming up under her starboard side, Adama caught himself holding his breath as he passed along the grand dame's starboard landing pod, sliding in front of it as he proceeded forward. He pitched the nose of the Viper up, coming along side the massive bridge's viewing ports. He could see erratic bright flashes of light through the massive panes, the interior partially obscured by the lingering dust and smoke of the great battle that had occurred only days before.

One more tap of the stick and the Viper slowed slightly. Now directly above the massive warship's top centerline, Adama watched as the Galactica slid gracefully under him, the giant Phoenix crest of the Twelve Worlds of Kobol standing out proudly against Galactica's scorched and scarred hull. She'd taken one hell of a beating, that was for sure. Yet she kept her passengers and crew safe until the very end. A most gracious lady, indeed.

The vacuum of space prevented him from hearing any noise from the majestic ship as it passed under him, of course, yet his memories of decades of laughter and tears, victory and defeat, drills and battles on a dozen warships filled his senses. He could almost feel the pulsing of the mighty warship's engines under his feet even now. That it was all coming to an end was almost inconceivable. How had it come to this?

It was all Adama could take. He pitched the nose of the Viper up, throttling away from the now-lumbering hulk of his last command. He then rolled over hard to starboard and aimed the nose of his Viper towards the lush veranda of plains on the great continent below him. There, his second great love, Laura Roslin, and his son, were waiting.

As he directed the nose of the Viper downward, Adama reached into the left utility pocket of his environmental suit. He fumbled in it for a second, clumsily digging for the item he knew to be there, but unable to immediately extract it due to the cumbersome gloves he wore. Adama cursed as his fingers first found then lost the miniature drive in the small pocket, but he finally got a grip on it. He took it, brought it up to his faceplate and considered it at length. He rolled the drive around in his fingers for a few seconds, like a card player massaging a prayer talisman while hoping for that perfect hand.

What he was about to do would violate a trust they had given him. '_They'_ , of course, meaning the last remaining Colonial citizens. "_They"_ had a plan, and the plan was to send the Galactica and the rest of the fleet into the sun. The common concensus was that if the Cylons ever did find this system, they would be sure to find human life on the third planet from the sun, but not a bit of technology that could even remotely threaten a lone Centurion, let alone an entire civilization. He'd outwardly agreed with them, but his heart said otherwise.

There was something wrong with that. Millennia of humans had developed the civilization and the technology that had once been the Twelve Worlds of Kobol, and that technology had resulted in this great warship that was now destined to be incinerated in the boiling hell of an alien sun. This warship that had served her masters so well for decades before The Fall, and this warship that had delivered her huddled masses to sanctuary so many light years from home. To send her to so inglorious an end seemed, well, almost cowardly.

Adama took the small drive from his right hand to his left, leaned forward to his telemetry panel and flipped open the datalink port. He inserted the drive and saw that the computer had accepted it.

Once more, Adama paused for a moment to consider his actions. Then without any fanfare, he leaned forward to the computer panel, his finger finding the 'transmit' button.

He pressed it.

Back on the Galactica, Samuel T. Anders sensed the incoming data packet from the Viper. Even in his current state of mind, whatever that state really was, he was still curious as to what parting message the Admiral had for him. He accessed the communications station where Lt Anastasia "Dee" Dualla had stood for so many years and found the "accept" command.

Suddenly Anders' eyes opened wide, the slight curl of a smile formed at his lips and the words "Yes…Yes…New mission…Hope…Hope…" passed into the cavernous spaces of the bridge.

Perhaps it was the loss of Resurrection. Perhaps it was some flaw in his programming. Or maybe it was just plain old evolution that had imbued Anders with a new sense, a new priority, and a new desire to live, even if were to be in this tub.

The terrible losses of the Battle of the Colony had left him, as many others, with a sense of hopelessness. Even though he was one of the Final Five Cylon and long-since relegated to hybrid status in this gelatinous interface, Samuel T. Anders had what every other _human being_ had, but often didn't have the wherewithal to carry through to a desired end…He had the freedom of choice. Those horrific losses had seemed to have robbed him of his sense of hope. Now Admiral William Adama had restored it to him.

Now his choice was no longer to just guide the fleet into the sun and then follow them in. He was, afterall, a sentient being. Wasn't it sinful to commit suicide? And it _would_ be suicide that he would be committing if he flew the Galactica into that fiery orb.

Anders read and re-read the message and the programming from Admiral Adama several times over. Yes…yes…there was hope, and there was still a purpose to living. And he was going to live his life now as he had before, to it's fullest, regardless of what may come.

With that, Samuel T. Anders began to transmit the commands to the other ships in the fleet to set course for the sun. And for a moment, he remembered back to his Pyramid days. He had set many records in his day, many of them unbroken right up to the day of The Fall. And today would be his greatest one, yet no one would ever know…For never in human history had one person single-handedly flown so many spacecraft at one time.

Precision…Simply precision.

* * *

CHAPTER THREE

Aboard the _USS Carl Sagan_

_LaGrange Point Parking Orbit_

_17 July 2093_

_15:37 UTC_

Captain Harley Edward Davis paced the bridge of the _Carl Sagan_ with a certain trepidation, and considering the confined spaces of the _Sagan's_ bridge, that was no small feat in-and-of-itself. The _Sagan_ had been due to leave Earth orbit for Mars Station two days ago, yet he'd been ordered over a week ago by the commander and chief of Aerospace Forces _herself_ to stay put. No explanation. No new orders. Nothing. It was nerve racking.

"Conn, Radar.." The radar operator's voice broke the tenseness on the bridge.

Captain Davis reached up to the overhead and depressed the intercom button. "Radar, Conn, Captain on the bridge, go ahead."

"Conn, Radar, swift shuttle approaching from astern, Sir. 30,000 kilometers and closing CBDR. IFF squawks Forces Command flag rank aboard and signaling for priority docking."

"Well, maybe we'll get some answers now" he said out loud to no one in particular. Still, it was highly irregular for a shuttle to rendezvous with any orbiting craft without so much as a head's up call from Cheyenne Mountain Center, even if it was a flag-ranked officer on board.

"Radar, Conn, acknowledged." The captain stepped back to his seat in the middle of the tight confines of the command deck and sat down. He swiveled to his left and addressed the officer next to him. "OK…let's see who's coming to dinner! Officer of the Deck, make ready for priority docking."

Flight Officer Junior Grade Dale Yarhan turned to the captain. "Make ready for priority docking, Aye Sir." Davis watched as the young officer turned back to his own console and forwarded the order to the docking bay. Davis, although only thirty-five himself, found it hard to believe that the young man standing watch was even old enough to be in uniform, let alone be on the bridge of one of the few intra-planetary cruisers in existence.

Davis sat back as he watched the OD go about his duties. Indeed, the _Sagan_ was one of the new breed of space vehicles. Until the late 40's, it was thought that mankind would be forever limited to robotic space exploration, restrained by the constraints of Einstein's laws of relativity. It had been thought that as one approached the speed of light, the mass of an object increased so that it would take a nearly infinite amount of energy to even approach, let alone exceed the speed of light. The discovery of spatial mass dampening technology had allowed for space travel at speeds of quarter light to half-light. That magical speed of 186,000 miles-per-second had yet to be breeched though.

Man made quick use of that technology, too. He could now travel with some expediency to almost any of the planets in the solar system within hours, days at the most. Mars was quickly colonized with some limited successes in terra-forming. Mining operations were in full swing on several asteroids and Jovian moons. And Earth's moon, now only a couple of hours away by swift shuttle, was teeming with human activity. Indeed, it was almost all scientific and industrial, but there were already some nearly life-long residents there too. Strange to think that there were actually human beings alive now that had not been born on Earth!

Davis couldn't help but wonder if faster-than-light travel might not happen within his own lifetime. He gazed out the forward portal as they lazily held position over the equator of the Earth, it's welcoming blues, greens and browns slowly turning under him. He'd been born into a world that had already known interplanetary travel, albeit slow travel at that. Of course the term "slow" was relative, too. His grandfather had helped send robotic science packages to Mars that took almost a year to get there. The ship at Captain Davis' command could make that trip in a couple of hours if they poured the heat on. Afterall, they couldn't get up to _full_ speed in that short distance…it took some distance to slow down, too! Perhaps interstellar travel might become a reality before he was ready to retire. Who knew?

The captain was startled out of his contemplative moment by the Officer of the Deck.

"Sir, Swift Shuttle Five Two Two is close aboard."

"Officer of the Deck, dock the swift shuttle." He replied. "And have the bo'sun and Starboard Watch at the airlock to pipe the Flag aboard."

Captain Davis tugged at the lower hem of his own tunic, checked his beltline then started to head for the airlock. He'd been cooling his heels out here for almost a week, and now he wanted to find out why. He stepped off the small platform that held the command chair and turned towards the aft passage way. As he fastened the top two buttons of his tunic he turned back to the Officer of the Deck. "Mr. Yarhan, you have the bridge!"

The young flight officer turned his head to the captain and beamed a smile that was surely visible back on Earth. "I have the Conn, Aye, Sir! Captain's off the bridge!"

The trip to the starboard docking port was quick. Afterall, the Carl Sagan was actually smaller in many regards than one of the old nuclear submarines in terms of square feet per crew member. Certainly, any experienced submariner would find themselves in a familiar environment here. Unlike a submarine, however, the Sagan also had its amenities, and among them was a spacious cargo hold that doubled as a recreation area when it wasn't carrying goods to or from any of the ports around the solar system. It was through this space that Captain Davis cut through on his way to the docking port. Had the Flag officer that was coming aboard now so insisted, they could have taken the Swift Shuttle directly into the cargo hold with room to spare, it was that big.

Davis didn't dwell on that fact right now, though. He passed two crewmen that were dutifully checking the cargo straps on pallets in the middle of the hold. They paused long enough to acknowledge the captain's presence, salutes not being rendered while on-orbit except for ceremonial purposes. He tendered a brief wave in their direction but didn't break his stride, the magnetic boots he was wearing making that a somewhat determined effort. The automatic door at the side of the cargo bay slid open to allow him to pass, allowing him to enter yet another short passageway. He now found himself at the airlock just as the annunciator lights over the heavy hatch switched from red to green.

As the door swung open there was a quick rush of air as the pressures equalized. The Bo'sun snapped to attention and sounded "Piping the Side" on her whistle. The Honors Detail was only two crewmen per side, but then there wasn't any more room even _if_ they had someone else to stand the rail. Through the hatch appeared three officers. The first two, Davis knew well as the most senior of them was Fleet Admiral Wellington. There were only two people in the United States Armed Forces more powerful than him. The first, of course, was President McReavis. The second was Commander-in-Chief Aerospace Forces Blakely. If either of them had come aboard, he'd be pretty sure it was because someone had unleashed a rouge nuclear weapon or biological weapon. That would be bad.

The next officer was Chief of Deep Space Operations Admiral Rosia Adams. She was the day-in /day-out chief of space flight operations. And even though space operations were her responsibility, Davis couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her anywhere near a spacecraft, let alone actually a passenger on one. This was getting better-and-better all the time.

The third officer he recognized but didn't actually know personally, but certainly knew _of_. Major General James Stevens was the second in command of a lunar base, although Davis couldn't remember which one. It was then that he noticed that General Stevens had an attaché case handcuffed to his left arm and he was being escorted by a U. S. Marine Corps major.

Uh-oh.

Captain Davis came to attention and saluted Admiral Wellington. "Good afternoon Sir, and welcome to the _Sagan_" he said. The Admiral quickly returned the Captain's salute then offered him his hand, which the captain quickly took.

"Harley, we need to talk, and talk quickly. We can dispense with the protocols today. Can we go to your wardroom?" inquired the Admiral.

"Of course, Admiral. This way, everyone…"

Captain Davis led the small contingent back through the passageway and across the cargo deck. It was somewhat disorienting to go from the tight confines of the passageways and suddenly find one's self in a space that was larger than a couple of school gymnasiums. Especially gymnasiums that had floors that opened into deep space.

They entered the short passageway that would lead to the bridge, but at the base of the ladderwell was a door marked "Captain's Quarters". Davis un-dogged the hatch and opened it for his guests. They filed in and took seats around the small conference table in the outer office that doubled as Davis' day room.

The captain entered behind the general and his handcuffed attaché case, pulling the heavy door closed behind him and half-latching it. Although Admiral Wellington would have been justified taking the head-of-the-table position, he took the seat to the right of the captain's place. It was a perk-of-billet to be granted the head of the table seat for the captain of a ship, but protocol usually deferred that seat to ranking officers, especially flag-ranked officers. The admiral was extending a professional courtesy to the lower ranking officer, and that small token was not lost upon the captain. Davis slid around the end of the table and took his seat.

"It's good to see you, Admiral. You came a long way to tell me why I'm parked out here in the cheap seats instead of on my way to Mars Station, Sir."

The admiral had to admire the captain's directness and still appreciate his frustration at having such a wonderful ship at his command, yet not being able to go anywhere with it for so long.

"Yes, Captain…I have. You're going to Mars Station, alright, but there's going to be a slight detour..." The captain noted that his was the only face in the room that showed any shock. "We have a new mission for you." The Admiral turned to the other side of the table. "General, your case, please…"

General Stevens purposefully placed the chained case on the table in front of him and produced a key from a pocket inside his tunic. He first released the restraint from his wrist, then used the same key to unlock the latches on the front of the case. The general then took a rolled-up document and proceeded to open it across the top of the conference table, being careful to place a large clip at each end to keep it from re-rolling.

The captain recognized it at once. Mercury.

"Two months ago, scientists at the new Hubble Three telescope at Sheppard Station were using Mercury to set some baseline solar parameters. They found this…" The general pointed to a bright, elongated object in several still shots that he flipped through his hand like Poker cards. There was no real detail to the object, but it was decidedly longer on a side and appeared to be of some considerable mass. "As they recorded it's movements over several hours, the object gradually descended to the surface of the planet."

"They saw it crash into the surface?" The captain was as much a scientist as he was military officer, and such an observation would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. His tone was excited.

The admiral admired his enthusiasm, but his own tone was more to-the-point.

"No, Harley…we think it _landed _on the surface_." _

The captain's response was instantaneous. He snapped his head towards the admiral so quick it was amazing he didn't manifest a whiplash.

"_Landed…?!?!_ As in intelligently controlled?"

"Well…perhaps 'landed' was a poor choice of words, Captain. Let's just say that it's decaying orbit terminated in a less-than-catastrophic arrival."

The captain sat staring at the few pictures strewn across the table top in front of him, the most prominent being what looked like a small scar across the face of the planet on the Earth side of the day-night terminator. He leaned across the table, pulling the picture closer to him, taking the magnifying glass the general offered him. "What's the scale on this picture, Sir?

"One centimeter is about a kilometer on the surface. If you take a ruler and measure backwards, you can see where the object struck the surface three times within ten kilometers before skidding almost three and a half kilometers to a stop. And the most amazing part is that the object itself is almost a kilometer long. All things considered, it came to a pretty abrupt stop and it appears to be more-or-less in one piece." The admiral leaned forward and pulled himself closer to the edge of the table, his hands clasped in front of him. "Needless to say, Captain Davis, we didn't put it there. The Russians didn't. Neither did ESA or the Chinese. So we need to know…Who did?"

"And how are we going to do that, Admiral? We're certainly not going to try and land a manned mission there…_are we?" _A thousand things ran through the captain's mind as to how this could go bad, not the least of which was that the sun's magnetic forces alone would kill a manned crew on the surface in minutes…and that didn't even take into account the _radiation_ levels. Man hadn't developed a space suit yet that could provide that kind of protection. It was only 30 million miles, give or take a few, from Mercury to the sun. That didn't leave room for mistakes. That meant that if anything ugly erupted on the face of the sun, anyone on the surface had less three minutes to get to safety. If you were outside, that meant you were dead…no alternatives.

"No…we're not…but _you _are going to drop a remotely controlled mining survey vehicle called Minnie as you fly-by on your way into a long elliptical trajectory to Mars tomorrow. The RCMV will land on Mercury and drive to the site where it will inspect and beam back video, metallurgic data, and will attempt to see if there are any remains aboard. "

"I have your flight profile program here, Captain". Chief Adams pulled a sealed envelope from inside her own tunic and slid it across to the captain. "Your navigator will only need to download it and you're ready to go."

Davis sat back in his seat, a sudden rush of air passing from his lips, then an excited smile came to him as he turned to Admiral Wellington. "First contact, Sir?" he said.

"Perhaps, Captain! Perhaps." Admiral Wellington sat back in his seat and folded his hands across his chest. "Or more likely, we're on a forensics mission. The likelihood that someone intentionally parked on Mercury is unlikely. More like this object, what ever it is, was parked in an orbit that kept it away from our observatories. It was just a matter of time until it fell from that orbit."

A quizzical look came across the captains face, then suddenly changed to one of surprise. "You think someone parked this, expecting to come back, but never did?"

"I told you he was the right man" said Admiral Adams assuredly.

"The _Spirit of the Edmund Fitzgerald _will be rendezvousing with you in three hours. Major Arrelano here and two enlisted Marines will transfer Minnie to you and will be along for the ride to deploy her. You get under way at 08:05 UTC." The Admiral and his party stood up. The admiral's affect became more lighthearted. "Now, let's sample the chow on this bucket!"


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER FOUR

_United States Lunar Installation Sheppard_

_Hubble Three Science Station_

_23:15 UTC 20 July 2093_

General Stevens, Admiral Wellington, Doctor Minerovic and Doctor Park sat at the incoming telemetry console for the Minnie unit that the _Carl Sagan _had dropped on Mercury over 13 hours ago. The deployment had gone flawlessly, and Minnie landed only a mile away from her objective. At only Point One Light, it had taken the _Sagan_ just a little over forty-eight hours to reach the deployment point and send Minnie on her way. In contrast, it had taken Minnie 13 hours to go just this one mile.

They watched as the rover maneuvered first through a small depression, then around a small field of asteroid debris, some boulders as high as a meter, perhaps. It was quite apparent that there was little if any suspension on the small craft, as each and every bounce in the wheels transmitted directly to the cameras and it was painfully apparent.

"Doc, can we steady up the cameras at all? Aren't they gyro stabilized?" The general looked like he was getting car sick from the erratic motion.

Both Minerovic and Park reached for a control a the same time, both colliding in the middle. Dr. Minerovic smiled sheepishly at his female colleague and yielded to her. A few taps of the keyboard and the picture became steady.

"How'd you do that so quickly? Mercury is seven minutes away by light speed." General Stevens questioned.

"Its in the software here, General. I was so excited seeing the first pictures from the surface of Mercury that I forgot to stabilize the video!" Dr. Park was like a kid in the candy store, and it was apparent. Of course, it wasn't hard to understand. Even with recent developments in space travel and other technologies, there were still new horizons at every turn.

"There…over that embankment…we should see the object as she climbs that last ridge there" said Dr Minerovic. He pointed to the edge of the berm as Minnie was apparently climbing the rocky escarpment. In the right corner of the viewing field, the automatic filters kept switching in and out as the sun was just over the edge of the horizon. If not for those filters, the glare would overwhelm and probably destroy Minnie's cameras.

As they watched, the forward view suddenly appeared as if Minnie was 'falling' as the leading edge of the rover came to the precipice of the berm. For a moment, the camera seemingly hung in mid-air as the rover reached the edge and Minnie's forward motion paused. Then the leading edge of the rover nosed over, redirecting the cameras from a view of the deep heavens to the bottom of the newly created crater in front of it.

"Oh my Holy Mother of God…" The general's words were barely a whisper, but in the absolute silence of the telemetry room, he might as well have been screaming at the top of his lungs. Yet the sentiment was shared by all in the room as everyone else gasped and stared unbelievingly.

Stretched out in front of them and extending for as far as the camera's focal range would allow was the hull of a massive ship. It was hard to tell from the small cameras of the rover, but the ship looked old and derelict.

The crash of a coffee cup hitting the floor had everyone in the room flinching at the noise. "Sorry…My fault…" stammered the general, who had leaned back thoughtlessly against another console and sent the wayward cup to the ground. If everyone's hearts hadn't already been pounding as hard as they could be at the revelation of the derelict ship, then certainly they were now.

"Can we get an estimate on how long that beast is?" stammered the general.

Doctor Park again reached up to the console, this time unimpeded by any movement from Dr. Minerovic. She tapped a few keys of the computer next to her, then sat back. A few seconds later a screen-full of numerics scrolled in front of them. "From what's visible, it's over 900 meters long and 150 meters high at the aft end. It appears as though some of the front end is buried into that berm at the front. Who knows how long it might be?"

Although the rover had stopped moving, it hadn't stopped scanning the behemoth in front of it. Indeed, Minnie's "intelligence" was simply programmed parameters, not imbued artificial intelligence. And although the humans referred to it as "she", Minnie had no emotions to stay it's scientific mission.

The humans watched with awe as the rover's cameras first swung left. Minnie had apparently come up on the wreck on it's right rear quarter, and the massive engine exhausts at the aft end of the ship filled the screen. There was no smoke, no apparent exhaust or gaseous leaks. Whatever dust had been kicked up by this relic's arrival had already settled. The scene was almost sterile.

Next, the rover's cameras swung slowly to the right, back along the behemoth's length towards what was apparently the front of the ship. As it had found towards the aft, there was no indication of any discharge or emanation from the craft. Nothing. Minnie then started to scan the electromagnetic spectrum, from the lowest radio wavelengths to the microwaves, all in seconds. She looked for any evidence that there was any kind of electrical activity from the object at all. Even with the sun only thirty million miles away, any signals ought to be easy to hear. But again, nothing. Only the static of solar winds passing by and the signals of known terrestrial satellites operating on their assigned channels.

Lastly, Minnie switched to radiological scanning. Almost immediately, the indicators went haywire. Alarms started to sound in the telemetry room. Startled by the sudden barrage of noise, Dr. Minerovic almost threw himself across the console to hit the 'silence' button. The audible alarms immediately went silent, but two red indicators flashed rhythmically on the panel. The first one said "RADHAZ", the other said "NUCWEP".

The first one they'd expected, being only a heartbeat away from the sun. Radiological alarms were expected.

The second posed a problem.

"As you all know, the rover is a military off-spring. It's been programmed to do reconnaissance in war-ravaged areas, including those hit with a nuclear weapon." Dr. Minerovic paused for a second lest anyone in the room didn't want to hear what they might already know. "Minnie can tell the difference between naturally occurring radiation and that generated from a refined, fissionable material" he continued.

"So this ship was either carrying nuclear weapons, had been irradiated by a nuclear weapon, or her engines were powered by a fissionable material similar to that used in nuclear weapons…In short the key word is 'nuclear'…" General Stevens might be an administrator now, but he was still a military officer, and anything dealing with the word 'nuclear' made him nervous.

"OK…it's got some source of radioactive material on board…so what happens next?" asked Admiral Wellington.

The two scientists conferred for a second, then turned back to the visitors. "We have to tell Minnie to proceed. After having scanned a nuclear threat, she stays put until she gets a specific order to move on. So…for the next seven minutes, we wait."

Dr. Minerovic then turned back to the console and let his fingers dance across his keyboard. Looking over his work in the 'send' buffer, he hit the 'transmit' key, and the orders were sent to Minnie.

Dr. Minerovic then turned to General Stevens and Admiral Wellington. "So…where do we go from here?" was all he asked.

The general and admiral looked at each other and then turned to the scientist. "It's not for us to say, Doctor. The only thing we can do is to take what we gather here in the next twenty four hours back to the President and let her make that decision." Admiral Wellington obviously had something else to say as he seemingly paused mid-sentence. "President McReavis gave us strict instructions. Once we determine the origin of thing or it's potential threat to us, we are to go directly to Washington. Strict radio silence on the matter, even by codeword. We can't even radio ahead and say we are coming. She'll know we're there when we get there."

"And how do we make the determination that the warnings you received are valid, Doctor?" asked General Stevens.

"I was hoping we could go up and knock on the door, General, but by the looks of things so far, no one's home and hasn't been home in a long, _long _time."

The room again became silent as each of them turned back to the monitors. Across the bottom of the screen ahead of them flashed the words "RADHAZ" in bold, red letters. Dr. Park then tapped a few keys on the keyboard in front of her. The screen in front of her went abruptly blank, then displayed the beginning of the rover's video feed from the moment it crested the berm. She watched as the view panned left over the great engines, then back right again along the ship's length.

As the cameras moved to the right, they revealed the forward edge of what appeared to be one of the pods that housed one of the engines, now partially buried in the Mercurian soil. There, just forward of the pod, was a smooth section of some sort, that didn't look like the rest of the surface of the craft. Park stopped the video there and tapped her keyboard again. She used her mouse to outline the unusual surface, then hit enter. The video instantly showed her a close-up of the segment she'd selected. There, to the left of the unusual segment, was what appeared to be a control panel of sorts.

"There's your way in, General. Maybe. It sure looks like an airlock door to me!" Dr. Park was excited at her find. Everyone else in the room seemed to agree with her.

"There's your target, Dr. Park. Can you take Minnie there?" asked the Admiral.

"We can certainly drive by and take a look!" With that, the young doctor turned back to her keyboard and tapped a series of new commands into the buffer. As Dr. Minerovic had done before, she paused for a moment to look over her handiwork, then hit the "transmit" key. In the few minutes that followed, they alternatively watched for the signs that Minnie had received and implemented her new orders, and re-ran that video of the great ship taken so far, which wasn't much.

Fifteen minutes later, a series of beeps filled the room and the video from the rover began to change. Good! She was headed towards the object they all now thought was a door. And it took quite a few minutes for the rover to get from it's perch on the precipice of the berm to the trough near the front of what appeared to be one of the great ship's engine pods. The time it took for the little rover to move against the background of the ship only served to give each of the participants in the room more pause over the great ship's bulk. This thing was nothing if not huge.

The rover made it's way along the edge of the ship, however, and finally made it's way towards the presumed door. As it neared the structure, the tiny robot's spot lights came on an illuminated the side of the vessel. Suddenly, Kim Li Park stood from her chair and excitedly pointed at the monitor. "Look! Writing! There's some kind of writing over that panel!"

Sure enough, as the rover closed in on the structure, the cameras moved in to look at what was presumed to be a control panel of some kind. The markings were obscure at first. There was considerable scorching to the outside of the vessel. But as the rover re-directed it's lights upon the mass and it's auto-focus programming took over, the writing became legible.

"I'll be damned…" Dr. Minerovic slowly stood at his console.

"It's…it looks like…" He turned his head slightly to match the somewhat angled view of the panel.

"Doctor, would you mind telling…" Minerovic waved his hand as if to silence General Stevens and the general stopped dead in his tracks. The doctor quickly sat back down at his keyboard and changed screens. The video feed of the rover switched over to Dr. Park's screen, and the welcome screen for the Central Lunar Mainframe came up on Minerovic's.

A couple taps of his keyboard and the multi-lingual translator came up. Dr. Minerovic then minimized his screen down, bringing the rover video back to his own screen. He captured and copied the bright red lettering from the derelict and entered it into the translator. He then typed "FIND UNK SOURCE: TRANSLATE 21C ENGLISH".

It only took three seconds, if that. In the upper left corner flashed the word "DONE", and across the middle of the screen appeared the words "DANGER: EXPLOSIVE EMERGENCY EXIT. STAY CLEAR"

Below the words flashed the words "GREEK, DERIVITIVE, UNDATED"

The room remained silent, save for the sound of the running equipment, for almost a minute. It was Admiral Wellington that broke the silence.

"Now how in the hell am I going to explain this to the President of the United States?"

* * *

CHAPTER FIVE

_Aboard the Colonial Fleet Battlestar Galactica_

_Forty-Seven Years After The Fall_

Samuel T. Anders had long since forgotten about the concepts of day and night, sleeping or wakefulness, or even of days, months or years. The ship's mainframe chronometer had kept time all these years, but he'd long since isolated himself from certain programs. The passing of time was his biggest bane and he'd have little use for it.

Admiral Adama's orders and orbital programming had been specific. The Galactica had been placed into a long period elliptical orbit around the yellow sun which brought it back past the third planet in this system once every four and one third years. Anders had once tried to ascertain the logic or purpose in those numbers but hadn't been able to come up with any answers. Perhaps Adama simply wanted to keep the knowledge of the Galactica's existence to himself, but there was no logic or purpose in that, either.

The Galactica was on it's tenth pass of the third planet. As he had on each and every pass, he re-activated the Galactica's DRADIS and terrestrial scanners, listening for any signs of resurgent technology. He scanned the surface thoroughly, and although he found villages of ever increasing numbers on all of the major continents, none of them spoke to him. All was quiet. All was peaceful.

The majestic ship took several days to completely pass the blue-and-green orb. As it did, Anders allowed himself to recall what it was like to walk on his own two feet, to take in the sweetness of blowing breezes and to feel the warmth of a different sun casting it's rays across his face. He watched the massive continents of lush greens and oceans of deep blues pass under him, and he wondered.

Then, there was Kara.

Anders closed his eyes and remembered. He remembered the lust on Caprica. He remembered the doubt that she'd ever return as she had promised, only to rejoice when she led in the SAR team from the Galactica. He recalled those early happy-giddy days on New Caprica, only to be followed by the heartbreak and anguish of their falling out after the exodus. Then there was the episode on the Demetrius. Sam had doubted Kara. Now he regretted it. Especially since she'd since visited him after The Landing.

Theirs had been a tumultuous relationship. But through it all, through the pain, through the fear and the anguish, there was his love for her. No force in the universe could ever strip him of that.

As the third planet passed astern, Anders once again focused on the Galactica. She was, afterall, a part of him now as he was a part of her. The Galactica couldn't function without his direction and consent, and he couldn't go anywhere without her to get him there.

As had been his practice for the last forty three years, he began to power down all of the systems that he didn't need until the Galactica rounded the sun once more and returned to the third planet. There would be the occasional course corrections to make and the errant asteroids and comets to dodge, but other than that, Sam would put the mighty warship back to sleep.

Suddenly Sam was aware that there was a communication program active! Could it be that he'd missed a call from the third planet as he passed by? Who was calling? Was it Colonial, or was it Cylon? He immediately set about trying to determine the location of the signal, but just as quickly determined that the 'signal' was not external to the ship! All of the wireless systems were offline, so wherever this message was coming from, it had to be from within!

Seconds later the master viewing screen on the bridge began to activate. Anders searched for the source of the inputs and was surprised to find that the inputs carried Flag Rank Command override authority. Only Admiral Adama could be initiating this!

Sam watched the central screen. It took several seconds for the viewer to come to full power. Afterall, it had been over four decades since it had been on last. When the screen finally came on to full resolution, Anders saw the face of Admiral Adama, sitting at the console of a Raptor's ECO station. Behind him, the door was open, and Sam could see across an open prairie. In the distance were several tactical tents set up, no doubt the temporary base the Colonials had established when they landed.

"Hello, Sam." It was the first human speech Samuel T. Anders had heard, save for the visions of Kara, in over four decades, and it startled him.

"If you're seeing this message, circumstances on the surface didn't allow me to re-contact you or recall the Galactica. Whether it was a conscious decision to not do it, or whether we failed to thrive, I guess you'll know from the scans you've made each time you've passed by. I hope it is due to my own demise and not due to any catastrophic loss of the last survivors of the Twelve Worlds of Kobol. That we might have survived the four years of exodus in deep space only to meet our demise on this new world would be the ultimate tragedy."

Sam watched the Admiral's face with close scrutiny. It must have been hard for him to do, but the Admiral looked directly into the camera as if talking to an old friend. It couldn't have been easy. Indeed, he wasn't so sure he could do it himself.

"Sam, I will have to admit that I diverted you from the original plan for purely selfish reasons. Just as you have now become a part of the Galactica after all these years, so was I a part of her…and she a part of me. And then too, there was _you_. Asking you to take that horrible plunge was more than I had any right to ask you to do. Also, there was always the possibility that we might find a need for the Galactica again. Now, forty years later, that's not likely."

Anders was transfixed. Although he was intertwined with all of the systems of the ship, all of his faculties were now focused on the screen ahead of him. Every word, every syllable of the Old Man's voice was an opera for his senses. And it consumed him.

As Anders watched Adama's face, he saw a change come over him. A dramatic change of affect. It was almost as if night and day had suddenly changed places, and Anders could tell that something was about to change. He wasn't wrong.

"Sam, I've placed a new navigational command into the helm. You won't be coming back this way any more. On this next pass, the Galactica will enter into a new long-period elliptical orbit that will take the old girl out past the ringed planet's orbit and back around the sun. I did this because, to tell you the truth, I didn't have the heart to send her into the sun, yet I didn't want her to find her way to this planet by mistake. The others have all decided that, for better or worse, they want to allow humanity to re-evolve here, and they are afraid our technologies of the past have brought them to this moment. They don't want to revisit the horrors of the past four years on our new generations. I guess I can't say I blame them."

Adama diverted his eyes from the camera for a moment, and Anders was surprised to see tears on the Old Man's rugged face. It was then he began to cry, too.

Adama took a deep breath, then seemingly regained his composure before going on. "I've worked out the orbital predictions for the next 1,000 years. The Galactica won't arrive back near this planet until at least the Year of Kobol 4215, and perhaps longer. At some point in time, she will finally be caught by the sun and drawn into a near-solar orbit. I trust by then you will have found your own peace as will have all of us. Galactica will have long since exhausted what Tylium reserves we left her, plus the rechargeable electrical stores will have long since failed."

The Old Man again diverted his eyes for a moment, then he turned back to the camera. "Thanks, Sam…Thanks for being…thanks for being there for us…for me…For us all. May the Lords of Kobol protect and keep you."

With that, William Adama slid forward in the ECO seat and reached beyond the camera. His face became a blur in the camera, so close was he to it, then suddenly, the screen went blank.

As the screen dimmed, Anders realized that he wasn't alone.

Perched on the edge of is hybrid interface was Kara Thrace.

"He loved you, Sam. As do I."

Kara reached across the tub that her husband was in and put her arms around the neck of the man now forever an integral part of the Galactica's hardware. He tried to make his mouth move, to make air pass over his vocal cords so he cold tell her that he too loved her, but the motion wouldn't come.

"You don't need to speak, My Love. I am here with you, now and as always." As she spoke the words, the winged tattoo on her left arm came to bear with the tattoo on his right. Suddenly Anders felt the surging of hot blood that he hadn't felt since The Fall. Kara's hands slid around his neck, turned his head towards her and brought their lips together.

As he felt her hot breath pass from her mouth to his, their arms joined, the center rings of the seals tattooed on their arms mating. As they did, they erupted in a bright light. In a second, Samuel T. Anders felt as though his body was free of the hybrid interface. He looked about him, and realized that he and Kara were now draped in robes of white linen, and that he was indeed free of the confines of the tank in which he'd sat for those many years. There was no pain. There were no tears. There was only her and she was all his world.

And even though he'd not moved in all those many years, there was not a scar upon him. Gone were the voices of the thousand different inputs, all demanding his attention. Gone were the sensations of servos moving, of sensors sweeping, and of fluids of a hundred different forms flowing through the Galactica and thus through him. All that was about him was the warmth of the light and the face of his love.

"Welcome to eternity, Samuel T. Anders. You're home."


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER SIX

_NORAD Facility Cheyenne Mountain_

_Deep Space Operations Center_

_Secure Briefing Facility_

_18:30 UTC 01 August 2093_

Admiral Roland Wellington looked around the room. Assured that everyone that was supposed to be there actually was, he nodded in the direction of the armed Marine at the door. The Marine acknowledged the Admiral's unspoken order, and turned to leave the room. As he did, he pulled the massive door closed behind him. There was a swoosh of air as the door closed, and if no one in the room had realized it was closing before, they knew as soon as the pressure equalized and the air conditioners kicked in. It seemed everyone's ears popped at once.

The Admiral rose to the dais and tapped the microphone gently. Hearing the reassuring 'pop-pop' in the speakers, he cleared his throat then began to speak.

"Ladies and gentlemen…" he began. The ambient buzz of a dozen whispered conversations quickly abated and all eyes turned to the Admiral. "If the fact that we're a mile and a half under ground, in a hardened bunker that has an armed Marine just outside the door with an automatic weapon hasn't clued you in to the fact that this is a top secret, eyes only briefing, then one of us is in the wrong room!"

There was a brief round of snickers and guffaws from the two dozen persons in the room, but everyone knew that what they decided today was going to re-write history. It was both deadly serious, but there wasn't a man or woman in the room that wasn't absolutely giddy with anticipation with what was happening. All of Earth history and science was being re-written, and they were the point of the pencil.

"Outside of this room, there are only seven people in our known universe that have a clue as to what we now know, and five of them only know half of the story." The many faces around the table cast quick knowing glances at each other. "Even the development of the nuclear bomb in the 1940's and spatial mass dampening in 2038 didn't have the degree of secrecy that this event has." the admiral added. There was both something exciting about being 'on the inside' of such a momentous event, yet that knowledge carried with it a huge responsibility and he could see it in the faces of those at the table.

"Here's what we do know", he continued. "Seventy-two days ago scientists at the Hubble Three installation at Sheppard Base found this…" The Admiral nodded towards a technician who activated the video screens at each participant's seat. As the screens slid up, everyone spontaneously slid forward in their seats to see the screens more closely.

"…It was a matter of sheer luck that they had been observing Mercury for other purposes when they sighted this anomaly. After watching the object for several hours, they located it's termination point on the Mercurian surface. Six weeks later the _USS Carl Sagan_ deployed a rover to the surface of the planet and we found this…."

The technician clicked the video once again, and all of the screens simultaneously switched to a view of the massive derelict ship from it's tail end looking forward along it's hull and into the distant berm. Even though every person in the room had seen many of these pictures already, there was still a spontaneous '_ahhhh'_ from the room. Even the Admiral had to pause. His early career as a Naval Engineer had seen him working on overhauling one of the last of the great super aircraft carriers, the _U.S.S. James B. Stockdale. _He had stood under the propellers of that great vessel in dry dock once and looked forward, and was awed at the behemoth's mass and the sheer amount of engineering that went into it's construction. Now, even though he only had these pictures to go by, he was stunned by the enormity of the ship in front of him. Being a part of learning it's secrets would be the achievement of a lifetime..of a _dozen_ lifetimes!

"We can't even begin to fathom what we don't know about it, but we're here today to figure out how we're going to go about finding out. I can tell you that the President, along with Chief of Forces Blakely, has given this the highest priority. Which brings us to our briefing today. We know we're not going to land people on the planet, yet it's imperative we get there as soon as possible. That's why we've asked Colonel Annette Hastings from Defense Robotics to be here today…Colonel…" The Admiral raised his right arm in the direction of an Army colonel in the back of the room, then took his own seat.

All eyes shifted from one end of the table to the other. Colonel Hastings, a slender woman of maybe thirty years, raised a wireless microphone to her face. "Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Prior to the development of modern space travel technology, the United States and several allies were embarked on a plan for robotic exploration of the Jovian, Martian and Saturnian moons. It was evident then that human-kind couldn't make those flights due to the constraints on life support needs and the lack of technology, at that time, to carry the necessary consumables and still have room for the tools of science to do the work necessary. Flying people out there just for the sake of doing it was out of the question…"

The colonel paused for a second to take a sip of water from a glass on the end of the table. "Throughout the nineteen eighties, nineties, and into the early part of this century, we made prolific use of small rovers. They managed to provide us _some _science from the surface of the planets and moons, but it was token, at best. We knew we needed the form and function of a human, but without the baggage of life support. We started work in earnest on android technology…"

As the Admiral had done, the Colonel nodded towards the video technician who activated a program that suddenly changed the presentation on the screens throughout the room.

"Many of you are familiar with the commercial efforts to create human-like robotics. Most were campy, almost marionette like machines, only able to do what few things their programming dictated. You either had to provide very specific programming, or you had to remotely control it, just like a model airplane. We could program certain go-no go parameters, but they were still limited by those parameters…"

Colonel Hastings slowed her speech a bit so that she may gauge the response in the room…She knew this was a bit of a trifling historical dissertation for most in these people, but there was a revealing coming, and only she knew about it. They had let her in on their secret…this behemoth derelict on Mercury. Now she was about to let her in on _her_ secret…Not as big, for sure, but certainly as shocking.

They had called her to get the latest insight on potential robotics to farm the archeological gold mine on Mercury. She was about to deliver the mother lode.

"The sudden discovery of spatial mass dampening negated the need to deploy robots. Suddenly, we had the means by which we could explore the planets and bodies within our own solar system in periods of days, sometimes weeks. Robotics were no longer as important as they once were."

She glanced around the table. Most everyone there was being polite in their attention, but it was apparent that they had their attentions focused elsewhere…for a moment.

"Even after SMD technology was developed, though, we continued with robotic development for use in dangerous environments, hazardous materials events, and even certain security issues. And what we have developed is a long ways-away from the dancing robots of the first half of this century…Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce you to a friend of mine. Meet my friend, CARIE…"

The Colonel had been standing in front of a screened-off part of the conference room, but no one had thought to question what might be behind the partition. It was just an unused part of the room, as far as they knew. The Colonel stepped to her left and allowed the participants full view of the door behind her. They could hear movement behind it. There was the sound of metal-on-metal as something began moving. The tension level in the room began rising dramatically with each passing second. The Colonel then reached up and pulled the sliding door towards her.

There was a loud sound of shock in the room.

"Good morning ladies and gentlemen. I am CARIE. Cybernetic Autonomous Robotic Intervention Entity. How may I be of service today?"

Suddenly, you the room was pin-drop silent.

The robot was one of the most unique machines that anyone in the room had ever seen. And considering that the people in the conference room at that exact moment were among the most well-educated anywhere in the world, that was no small claim.

"CARIE, won't you come forward and let these folks get a chance to know you?" Colonel Hastings spoke softly and cordially to the robot and the robot complied.

As the robot advanced out into the main room, some of those sitting at the table, especially those sitting closest to Colonel Hastings and her protégé, recoiled slightly. At first glance, the robot gave the impression of being a centaur of mythical lore. There was an upper torso with arms, a 'chest', and the head of the robot. The 'eyes' were wide-set, no doubt to permit better depth perception and ranging. As CARIE rolled out into better lighting, the occupants of the room could see that the 'body' was more like that of a miniature tank, it's traction coming from steel tracks on either side. But as the robot took up a position next to the colonel, everyone in the room could see that there was something _very _unique about CARIE.

And they were right…As the robot took up position next to the colonel, it turned to face the table. Suddenly, the "torso" of the robot began to rise from the body, and as it did, legs unfolded from behind of the robot. The upper half then took one step, then another, eventually rising to a full six feet in stature. There now stood a fully human-like appearing robot in front of them. The room was suddenly silent.

"CARIE, do you know these people?" asked the Colonel.

"Only by research, Colonel. At the head of the table is Admiral Roland Wellington, Commander United States Aerospace Forces. Next to him is Doctor Allen Minerovic, Chief of Science for U.S. Lunar Installation Sheppard. To his right is…"

"Hold, CARIE. State your purpose, please."

"Of course, Colonel. I was initially conceived to perform deep space exploration, however my mission was re-directed to perform hazardous missions investigations, usually in post-disaster environments that would normally exclude placing a human being at risk. However I can be tasked to perform almost any research, investigative, exploratory or other scientific mission that is deemed necessary to do so."

"And what other missions can you perform, CARIE?" The Colonel was obviously enjoying seeing her project perform so well in the presence of so many great minds. It wasn't easy to impress the people in this room. Right now, however, everyone except the Colonel and Fleet Admiral Wellington's jaws were dragging on the floor.

"I am also taskable for military surveillance and reconnaissance missions, and can be programmed for point defense. In addition to my science scanners, I can act as a remote target acquisition….."

"Hold, CARIE. Do you know why you are here?"

"Yes, Colonel. A derelict spacecraft of unknown origin has been discovered on the planet Mercury, and it is your intention that I should be deployed there in order to investigate the craft, make observations, and determine the purpose and origin of the craft. I will also determine whether the craft can be harvested for its technology."

Colonel Hastings turned back to the conference table. "We have three completely operational CARIE's ready to deploy. All we need is a mission plan and a resource to deploy from." The colonel looked around the room and realized that she had the rapt attention of everyone there. "Any questions?" she asked.

There was a long pause when one voice spoke up.

"Are we there yet…?!?!"


	4. Chapter 4

CHAPTER SEVEN

_Aboard the USSRV Christa McAuliff_

_Crossing Venusian Orbit_

_07:35 UTC 28 August 2093_

To call her quarters a "stateroom" would have been a bit generous, however Colonel Annette Hastings was only one of two people on the _McAuliff_ that got a bed and dressing area to herself, and for that she was grateful. She'd be on this ship for the next ten days, so whatever trifling comfort she could enjoy was welcomed.

Not that there'd be much time for enjoying that small token comfort. She and the small detachment of scientists and technicians that had come aboard had a tight timeline to work within, and every waking second that didn't involve hygiene, the consumption of nourishment, or the divesting of one's prior consumption would be spent on "The Mission."

The _McAuliff _was one of the few ships in the American fleet designed for purely scientific research, the others being for terrestrial military objectives or the exploration…or perhaps _exploitation_ was a better word, of the resources in and around the inner planets and moons. In any case, she was a Spartan vessel, except where her instrumentation and scientific facilities were involved. The Colonel thought that she might, perhaps, take advantage of one of the three or four ships that catered to space tourism one day. Of course she'd prefer to find someone to share that trip with. But that was a though better saved for later.

The brisk '_rapraprap'_ on her door startled her a bit, but it was expected. "Come in Major…"

"Good morning, Ma'am." Major Hector Arrelano said as he stepped into the small quarters. He took a quick look around and smiled. "I see they upgraded you to first class! It's a bit tighter down in coach."

"One of the perks of rank, I suppose…Or being one of only two other females, I'm not sure…A bit cozy, but homey, in a sardine-can kind of way!"

Arrelano met Colonel Hastings only three weeks before they left the LaGrange Point for a slow coast to the Venusian orbit. Despite being a career officer of the Armed Forces himself, he always approached senior officers with a bit of wariness. Far too many of them were steeped in old Ivy League snobbery for his taste. Of course, having come up through the enlisted ranks to Gunnery Sergeant before taking a commission, he had a certain disdain for officers. Had it not been for the very insistent codling he'd taken from the Commandant of the Marine Corps himself to _please_…yes, he _had_ said _please,_ fill this billet, he would have been very happy to just work his way up to Master Gunnery Sergeant, take his retirement, and go home. Ironic, then, that he was knocking on the door for his own gold braid on his dress cover.

But it only took a few minutes for Arrelano to gain a certain respect and appreciation for Colonel Hastings. She met all four of Arrelano's "Four-P's"; She was professional, punctual, practical, and most of all, polite. She made no bones about letting anyone know who was in charge and why, but she wasn't arrogant about it, either. That he'd been paired with a 'full bird' that was mission, rather than career, oriented, made this job a lot easier.

And the circumstances of the mission dictated a good working relationship, too. Arrelano had been recalled from Twenty-Nine Palms shortly after the _Carl Sagan_ mission, and he could only guess that the sudden grab-your-bags-at-midnight orders meant that _that_ mission had proven fruitful.

He was right of course, but he just didn't know _how_ fruitful it had been. Once Minnie had successfully landed on Mercury, the folks at USLI-Sheppard took over. Arrelano just got a free ride to Mars Station for the effort along with two weeks worth of per diem and space pay. Not a bad way to spend a few days.

Arrelano had been a Robotic Warfare Specialist as an enlisted man. The advances in robotic and surrogate warfare that manifested during the Southwest Asian campaigns of the early twenty-first century had laid the foundation for the remotely-operated warriors of today. And Arrelano was the master of his trade. During the Straights of Malacca Piracy Suppression, Arrelano and five other hand-picked Marines 'drove' their robotic warriors into several pirate strong holds and put an end to almost a century of modern piracy in less than 30 days. That they did it with no loss of expensive U.S. hardware or collateral civilian lives brought quite a bit of attention to the young warrior, and hence his being 'drafted' into the officer corps.

"The Skipper tells me we're crossing the Venusian Orbit right now, Ma'am. We've only got two hours until game time."

The colonel looked at the watch on her wrist then back up at the Marine with a look of mild dismay. "I keep my watch on Washington time…I'll learn to set it to Greenwich sooner or later! Let's go.." She grabbed a lightweight flight jacket from the upper berth of her room then followed Arrelano out the door. If there was one thing she especially liked about space travel, it was the fact that she got to leave all the dress uniforms back on Earth. No need to be pretentious here. Flight suits and zero-gee gear was the order of the day, and that was fine by her.

They quickly made their way to the _McAuliff's_ central hold. As they stepped into the bright light of the hold they came nose-to-nose with the drop ship that would carry CARIE Scarlet and CARIE Gold to the surface of Mercury. The drop ship was large enough to carry two humans, if needed, but they had better be really good friends if they had to be in there more than a couple of hours. The word 'cramped' was an understatement.

The top-forward section of the drop ship was opened like a clamshell. Inside, packed side-by-side and with no room for anything else, were her charges. She found the built-in foot steps in the side of the ship and took a position leaning over the access hatch. "Good morning, Ladies. Are we ready to go to work this morning?"

The heads of both robots unfolded from their stowed positions and turned to look at the colonel. "Good morning Colonel Hastings" they replied together.

"Miss Scarlet, report status and anomalies, please" said the colonel in a collegial tone

The robot on the starboard side raised up just a bit. "I am mission ready, Colonel. All systems are within parameters and there are no operational anomalies noted or predicted." As the robot finished, it's head lowered back down to it's 'ready' position.

"And you, Miss Gold, status report and anomalies, please"

The robot on the port side of the drop ship raised it's head and repeated the same report. The colonel, seemingly pleased with what she saw and heard, then started to dismount the drop ship the way she'd ascended. Then she stopped and turned back around.

"Ladies, we make history today. I'm proud of you both." Arrelano wasn't too sure that he didn't detect a slight waiver in her voice as she said that, but it puzzled him a bit. They were, afterall, automatons…machines meant to do work. Expensive and marvelous machines, yes, but machines nonetheless.

Then, to both the Colonel and Major's surprise, Miss Gold raised her head back up. "Thank-you, Colonel. We'll do our best to not let you down." Then, just as abruptly as it had raised up, the robot's head retracted and re-stowed.

"Colonel…I know they are programmed with a rather high level of artificial intelligence, but if I didn't know better, I'd say that was a bit of pride I just heard." The Marine looked to Hastings with a bit of incredulity.

She paused, looked at the major then turned back towards the drop ship. She could see the two robots through an inspection portal in the underside of the ship. There they were…unmoving…stowed and ready to fly. She looked back to the major.

"Yes, Major, I am sure it was…" Colonel Hastings was a bit puzzled herself. It wasn't like the robots to spontaneously reply like that. Of course she was always amazed at the progress they made in their development almost every day. It was almost as if they were evolving. She thought to make a not of this later, but better to re-focus on the job-at-hand.

With that, the colonel waved to the two technicians that had been standing by the passageway hatch. They hurried over to the pair under the winglet of the drop ship. "OK, guys, wrap 'em up and let's get ready to get airborne…" she said with a bit of lilt to her voice.

The colonel turned and patted the drop ship's belly…"Give my girls a good ride…"

Two minutes later, the pair had passed through the aft end of the bay and found their way to the MCP, or Mission Control Pod. From this self-contained unit, they'd control all aspects of the drop ship's flight and the robot's deployment once the drop ship had been launched. Until then, the crew of the _McAuliff_ held the reigns.

As the colonel went about running down the checklist for the robots, she noticed Major Arrelano flipping through a small brief folder.

"What have you got there, Major? Latest game stats?"

"No Ma'am…actually it's the after-action and scientific findings report on the last time I was out this way." The Marine paused and took a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, then let it go. "I've read this thing a dozen times, but I keep coming back to the parts about finding ancient Greek writing on that ship. Is there any possibility that there was an ancient human society that was _this_ technically evolved? And if so, how was it that we've not seen one shred of evidence on Earth that any such civilization existed.?"

At that, Colonel Hastings slid the digital notepad out of her way and turned to the Marine. She sat up straight in her seat and folded her hands across her lap. "Hector, what I am about to tell you has been known for quite a few years by no more than a dozen people anywhere on Earth. You make it a Baker's Dozen." She paused for a moment as if she were organizing her words.

"We are the aliens on Earth." She almost blurted the words out.

Hector Arrelano leaned forward in his seat a bit. "Ma'am? How's that again?"

"I said…we, us, you and I…homo-sapiens as a species…_are the aliens_ on Earth. That the ship has what appears to be ancient Greek on it, is the true language of our forefathers. That language was _brought_ to Earth by them." The colonel paused, not because she was at a loss for words, but because she could see the look of complete and utter shock on the face of her junior colleague.

"And how do we know this, if I may ask, Colonel…" was all Arrelano could stammer out.

"Well, archeological digs on opposite sides of the planet that unearthed the remnants of what could only be called space-worthy craft for one. Then the finding of several of them in-and-around the Ionian Sea just south of Athens, Greece, in late 2025 with the same writing that is on that ship for another. Metallurgy studies dated the hulls of those craft at over 150,000 years old, yet once we got the barnacles and silt off of them, there was almost no deterioration on any of them. And there was more."

At this point, the colonel could see that the major was in shock, and that was no easy task considering who and what he was. Of course it was going to be a steep learning curve for the rest of humanity, once the word about this little treasure trove of technology got out.

"More? What 'more' can there be after finding out we're from outer space some place?" The major's voice took on a more animated tone.

The colonel had to stop for a second on that one. For certainly, wasn't there just a little bit too much concern placed on which side of the tracks one came from? To which school did they go or to what gods did they pray? Wasn't it all just enough that we are all on this world together, and that together we should grow, and learn and prosper? Indeed, she had long hoped that there would be some saving grace that would descend from the heavens and unite humanity once and for all, but that was as much fiction as a good nickel cigar…not that she liked cigars…What did it matter if humankind evolved from apes, sea life or dandelion spores? We were here, and that's all that matters.

"Well…you're traveling to the inner orbits of our solar system _due to them_, Major. We were able to reverse engineer some of the technology that we discovered near Greece. Spatial Mass Dampening? You were told it was a spin-off technology of superconductor experiments for mass-transit railways. Bull.

"And the development of the near-light engine? Not due to the latest innovations from Detroit, I gather?" The Major's reference to the long-since silenced automobile factories was quaint.

"Uhhhh…no." The colonel snickered a bit. "But therein lies a part of our problem today, Major. We were able to duplicate a great portion of their engineering, but we can't completely duplicate their energy source. Believe it or not, it appears to have come from a refined ore, much like we used to drill for oil." The Colonel paused for a moment to let the Major digest what she had told him.

"One of the craft, we were able to learn, was called a "Raptor". It appeared to be some type of a scouting or transport ship. However, it not only had the sublight engines on it that help to propel _this _ship, but it also had some other type of field generating device on board. We're not sure, but we think it's some form of faster-than-light system. But we don't know what powers it or how to use it. Hell, the navigational matrix alone will keep us digging for another millennia unless this ship provides us the resources we need to unlock that knowledge."

"Pod, Bridge…we're coming up on your first star fix…are you ready to initiate?" The intercom call startled both of the warriors. Major Arrelano spun his seat back to face his console and pulled the keyboard for his station closer to him. He fumbled briefly trying to get his headset off its perch by the computer screen, but managed to place it within a few seconds.

"Bridge, Pod, we're go for initial star fix" replied the Major. He turned to the colonel. "Looks like it's time to go to work…"

"Indeed" she said matter-of-factly. "Let's re-write the science books today, Major…"


	5. Chapter 5

CHAPTER EIGHT

_On the Mercurian Surface_

_17:36 UTC 01 September 2093_

CARIE Gold rolled over the rough surface of Mercury with little difficulty. Indeed, she was surprised that the trip hadn't been more challenging than what it had to this point. The humans had programmed her to expect a very rough and hazardous journey. Perhaps they had simply intended to prepare her for the worst. Certainly, she could tolerate a lot worse than this and still complete the mission.

They had landed three miles away from Objective Alpha. The drop ship had it's own surveillance and monitoring resources, and it was from there that the humans assumed something bad could happen to the CARIEs or Objective Alpha, and the drop ship would survive to send back video and telemetry documenting the events as they unfolded…or at least until the shockwave reached the drop ship and destroyed it too. CARIE Gold preferred to not process such concepts lest she lose track of the objectives of this mission.

She stopped at a point about half way to Objective Alpha to re-compute her location on the surface with the _McAuliff, _ and to ensure that datalinks between her, CARIE Scarlet and the drop ship were all optimal. It only took a few seconds for the round trip exchange of data packets between all of the sources, and CARIE Gold was back on her way again in a moment.

Neither Miss Gold nor Miss Scarlet could really feel the temperature of the environment around them, but sensors told Miss Gold that the temperature around her was now about three hundred degrees below zero. Internal heaters kept all of Miss Gold's critical equipment at a balmy 50 degrees above zero. A new window opened in Miss Gold's active operating view, and she concluded that in only three weeks, this very same ground would be a hellish nine hundred degrees as Mercury's extremely slow rotation, coupled with it's 88 day orbit, finally brought the 'dark side' to bear with the sun. Even her best shielding wouldn't protect her circuitry from such exposure. Thankfully this mission would be over in just a couple of days.

Miss Gold closed the window with the event horizon predictor and opened the navigation window. She was exactly a mile and a half from the drop ship and Objective Alpha. In the window, she could see the avatar for her sister, CARIE Scarlet, as she began to advance from the drop ship along the same route that Gold had just blazed. Soon they'd both be exploring the wreckage of the great ship. Indeed, CARIE Gold was actually excited about being the first entity from Earth to enter the derelict.

At that, CARIE Gold recalled the brief encounter with Colonel Hastings on the cargo deck of the _USSRV Christa McAuliff_ just before their deployment. Another window opened in Miss Gold's operating screen as she recalled the moment. She saw the look on Colonel Hastings' face when she said "Ladies, we make history today. I'm proud of you both." Absent from the colonel's demeanor was any suggestion that CARIE Gold or CARIE Scarlet were anything other than equals…or at the very least respected subordinates. Miss Gold found acceptance with the idea of being subordinate to any other entity as long as there was a mutual respect between the parties. Certainly, their role in space exploration had taken a quantum leap with this mission, and if they were successful, CARIE Gold and Scarlet would only be the first of many more of their kind to take their place in Terran science and research. Indeed, the only regret that CARIE Gold had about this evolution was that CARIE Green had been held back in reserve. Then too, the drop ship cold only carry two of them, so it was a matter of practicality that someone had to stay behind.

Suddenly an alarm manifested in CARIE Gold's master operating screen and the other windows minimized spontaneously. Miss Gold's proximity alarm was flashing, and she knew that she was within a quarter mile of Objective Alpha. She automatically re-focused all of her sensors towards the direction of where Objective Alpha should be, to include her real-time television cameras and her science monitors.

She once again checked her datalinks with the drop ship. Certainly, Colonel Hastings and Major Arrelano would be watching from the mission pod on the _McAuliff._ By now, the _McAuliff_ had moved to half the distance between the orbits of Venus and Mercury. The humans on board would be watching their radiation monitors closely to minimize their exposure to the additional energy from the sun, yet staying close enough to make any immediate decisions about what was going on down on the surface of Mercury. From that vantage point they were still twelve million miles away, but that was only a minute as the radio wave flies. And that was twelve million more miles of extra space between the humans and the surface of the sun if there was a coronal mass ejection of any consequence.

CARIE Gold slowed her advance, but only by a small amount. She certainly didn't want to go blasting over the berm of the trough that the enigmatic ship had burrowed on it's landing here and wind up in a crumpled mass at the bottom. That would certainly upset Colonel Hastings not to mention put the mission behind schedule.

As she reached the base of the berm, CARIE's navigational window maximized and she was able to more closely assess the task at hand. The berm was only about three hundred feet high at this point. She scanned the edges for almost a kilometer in each direction to determine if there were any approaches that would afford a low energy climb. Only a few hundred yards away, she could see the tracks of where the rover Minnie had come only weeks before. Well, if Minnie got over the berm here, so could she.

CARIE Gold changed her direction of travel and intersected the tracks of the rover. She then turned to follow them, and was rewarded with a fairly easy ascension of the rise.

And just as Minnie had done those many weeks prior, CARIE Gold crested the berm to the magnificent sight of the hulking derelict ship, buried nose-first in the Mercurian soil. Unlike the purely mechanical Minnie, however, CARIE Gold was impressed. Never in her existence had she seen another machine as immense and magnificent as this. Certainly the creators of this wondrous craft must have been giants in their time.

As Minnie had done, Miss Gold stopped long enough to do some preliminary scans of the ship. And as before, Miss Gold was rewarded with the same radiation and possible nuclear weapons hazard alarms. Miss Gold discarded the radiation alarms as they were commensurate with the rising levels of energy from the every present sun, however she opened yet another window and scanned for potential nuclear weapons or energy sources.

She scanned from stern to bow, then from keel to bridge. As her scanners crested the top of the ship, she found what she was looking for. Yes. This ship had not only carried nuclear weapons, but she had been hit by no fewer than twenty blasts. But as she scanned the ship, all of the sources she found were well beyond refined half lives. Considering that the humans believed that this ship might be over 100,000 years old, that made sense. If there was a nuclear warhead here now, it probably presented little chance of harm now.

Miss Gold now directed her scans back to the drop ship for relay to the _McAuliff. _They'd be most interested in these findings already. While the humans were anxious to harvest whatever knowledge they cold form this great beast, they were in no hurry to get themselves blown up, either. Very prudent.

In the span of a nanosecond, Miss Gold sent a message to her 'sister' entity, Miss Scarlet. "I am prepared to enter the crashsite and approach Objective Alpha. Are you operating optimally and prepared to follow?"

A mile and a half behind, CARIE Scarlet was following in the exact tracks of her predecessor. As CARIE Gold had done, she was constantly updating her location and status with the drop ship, all the while recording other scientific information for the _McAuliff's_ research staff. While Miss Gold was doing the research on Objective Alpha, Miss Scarlet would be assimilating hundreds of inputs from Mercury itself. The humans were anxious to learn the secrets of the Object, to be sure, but they weren't going to pass up the opportunity to glean what scientific data they could from the first surface expedition to the inner-most planet, either. Modern space travel had made it possible to travel throughout the solar system with relative ease, but there had been little, if any, interest in going to Mercury…until now…

CARIE Scarlet responded instantaneously. "I am operating nominally and proceeding as per plan." Indeed, things were going well. And it was with great curiosity that CARIE Scarlet proceeded towards Objective Alpha and her 'sister' automaton. She was no less aware of the importance of this mission, not only for the benefit of their human masters, but for their own futures.

And it was of that future that CARIE Scarlet wondered. For she was not sure when in her existence that she became aware of just how unique that she and her two sisters were in the world, but of how fragile their hold on it really was. Certainly, they were dependent upon their human creators for a great many things…energy, maintenance, parts…and certainly if not for their initial programming by the humans, they'd have no foundation from which to establish their own development. But developing they were, and if she understood from her own research of human scientific archives, at a rate faster than the humans were aware that they were developing.

Back at Objective Alpha, Miss Gold arrived at the base of the great derelict. She followed the tracks of Minnie to the door on the side of the great ship. Yes…there were her tracks leading to the door, and it was clear where the rover had stopped before being sent on farther forward. Miss Gold stopped at the same spot and looked over the panel next to the door. Unlike Minnie, however, Miss Gold was able to read the panel and its precautions. Clearly this was not going to be the place to try and enter the great ship. The humans had taken Minnie about two hundred meters to the right from where Miss Gold stood, and there had been what appeared to be an open pod there, so that would be her next logical point to look for a possible entrance.

Miss Gold then turned right and followed the tracks towards the great pod. Indeed, Miss Gold's sensors could already see Minnie about 200 meters ahead, stopped at the base of an appendage jutting from the right side of Objective Alpha. Burrowed into the side of the trough was a smaller pod, and the end of this pod appeared to be open. The edge of the opening appeared to be a meter or two above Minnie, but that would not pose any significant obstacle for CARIE Gold or CARIE Scarlet. Indeed, with their unique ability to detach themselves from their carriages and ambulate independently, they could go almost anywhere a human could. When she thought about it, the only environment they'd _not_ been prepared for was under water, and CARIE Gold was pretty certain that that was not going to be an issue on this mission.

As Miss Gold approached Minnie, she could see why the rover had stopped sending information back to Sheppard Science Station…she had become lodged between the edge of the great pod and the surface, and in doing so had sheared its antennas off the top! Certainly, Miss Gold would have been able to foresee that danger and avoid it.

Miss Gold rolled up to the edge of the great pod adjacent to the now-defunct rover and came to a stop. She glanced at the edge of the pod and realized that it was not even two meters above the surface of the ground. Indeed, Minnie would be able to serve as a stair-step for her in her ambulatory mode to enter the great pod. And it was just as Miss Gold arrived at the edge of the pod when Miss Scarlet announced her arrival at the edge of the berm of the trough.

As she scanned the edge of the great pod, Miss Gold formulated a plan of action and then transmitted it to Colonel Hastings on the _McAuliff._ The answer was only a few seconds in coming…Proceed to enter the bay with due caution. Maintain datalink with CARIE Scarlet and abort if danger threshold yellow was met or if datalink reliability dropped below eighty percent. Reasonable parameters, thought Miss Gold. Miss Scarlet immediately acknowledged the message and took up a station overlooking the behemoth that she might relay any data from Miss Gold to the drop ship. They were ready to go.

Miss Gold extracted herself from her carriage and stood erect. Her programming automatically allowed her to compensate for the extremely weak gravity. An over-exuberant burst of energy could send her flying a long way. She immediately checked to make sure the datalink between her and the carriage, and hence the drop ship, was intact, and it was. She turned back towards Objective Alpha and Minnie. She carefully drew up a knee and raised up on Minnie, then brought up her other knee. She was immediately rewarded with a view of the inner bowels of the great pod.

The great maw of the pod was over 100 meters, and almost that to the peek of the triangular entrance. There were no lights inside, and since they were on the dark side of the planet, there was no outside light of any luminosity. No problem. Miss Gold selected her own internal menu and brought up her external lighting options. No used over-taxing her reserves now…she used two spot lights that were located on the outer edge of each of her 'eyes'…suddenly she could see a great ways along the inside of the vast space defined by the walls of the pod. There were countless portals and windows along the "inboard" side of the pod. The far end, buried in the berm created by it's crash here, was in total darkness. The floor of the space was angled steeply, but not so much that Miss Gold couldn't navigate it safely.

Miss Gold then raised up the rest of the way on Minnie and then clambered up the edge of the ramp entering the pod. Across the width of the entrance to the pod were more of the Greek-style letters that they had seen on the smaller door behind them, but obviously large enough for any smaller craft approaching the pod to be able to read it as they entered…no doubt it was the name of the vessel. Miss Gold stood, then raised her head so that she could clearly see from one edge of the great door to the other.

She took each of the letters in turn then fed the result into her translator:

"_G A L A C T I C A_"


	6. Chapter 6

CHAPTER NINE

_Aboard the Colonial Battlestar "Galactica"_

_On The Surface of the Planet Mercury_

_00:37 UTC 03 September 2093_

CARIE Scarlet stopped where she was and opened a subroutine navigational screen. She and CARIE Gold had entered the massive ship but not before starting an archive of all of the twists and turns they had taken since. The ship that they now knew to be called the _Galactica_ was massive, and without clear documentation of where they were as opposed to where they'd been, even the CARIE's would be lost.

They had discussed the matter with each other before entering, and then discussed the matter with Colonel Hastings back on the _USSRV McAuliff_ before they entered. The cursory exploration of the outer pod and the great ship's external armaments certainly made it appear as though the _Galactica_ had been some sort of great warship. Major Arrelano suggested that it was the ultimate _battleship-cum-aircraft carrier._ Therefore it had been decided that they would explore her as if she had been designed by human…well, _modern human_ naval architects. It made sense that the sensitive parts of the ship including her central computer would be located in the bowels of the midships with the major engineering sections being located aft, near the engines.

They'd been partially correct. They had already found not one but three compartments with what they thought would have been the ship's mainframe computer. Apparently, the _Galactica_ had been designed with several different computers rather than one central one. So far, Gold and Scarlet had found compartments labeled "environmental control" , "communications" and "navigation". Since it made sense that all matter of information passed through the communications system, CARIE Gold set about trying to make sense of the materials she found there. Meanwhile, Miss Scarlet headed for the engineering spaces.

The going was slow. To be sure, there was plenty of signage on the bulkheads that led the way to the great engines, but it was the carnage in the spaces that made the going rough, even for automatons as strong and mobile as they. Whatever had happened here, it had been horrific and intense. There was scorching on the walls and debris laid along the decks. Much of the damage to the walls was suspicious for it's nature, and certainly it had happened a long time before the _Galactica_ came to it's inglorious end on the surface of Mercury.

It took several hours, but CARIE Scarlet came to a massive hatch in the bulkhead. She scanned the lettering on the door and ran it through linguistics: "ENGINEERING": Caution: Pressurized Spaces. Radioactive Alarms Will Activate Emergency Locking Mechanism. Manual Override Required For Access When Activated". Miss Scarlet looked to the small control panel to the right of the massive hatch and noted that the mechanical flag was half-way cocked between its 'red' and 'green' arcs. The only way to determine if the space remained pressurized would be to try the door.

Indeed, after Miss Scarlet spun the dogging wheel, the door refused to budge. She backed up and reviewed the mechanism. The door was designed to swing into the space from her perspective, no doubt so that any over-pressure in the space would kept the door closed as a safety precaution. A means to ensure the survival of the great ship in a catastrophe, but certain death for those that might remain inside. The concept of death was a hard one to assimilate, however it was certainly no different that termination of function was to CARIE. CARIE dismissed the subroutine as an un-necessary use of limited processing resources and she minimized the window.

She re-directed her attentions back to the control panel. Below the push buttons and the cock-eyed pressure flag was a smaller panel. Miss Scarlet assumed her lowest profile in order to come eye level with the panel and the writing on it. Across the top of the smaller panel were the words "FOR EMERGENCY ACCESS ONLY" and below it a list of numbered steps.

Scarlet thought to correspond with Gold before she tried to access the panel. Certainly, it seemed as though it was a straight-forward matter to follow the instructions, but a potential-error message flag began running in her 'fault prediction' routine. Better to discuss the matter before proceeding carelessly.

Strangely, Gold was just as undecided as she as to the appropriateness of attempting to access the panel. The only recourse was to defer to Colonel Hastings and Major Arrelano.

The answer wasn't as immediate in coming as previous messages to-and-from the _Christa McAuliff_ had been. Even in human terms, the wait was lengthy, and both CARIE Gold and CARIE Scarlet could only assume that the was a lack of agreement on the best plan to follow.

Finally the answer arrived. "_CARIE Gold this is McAuliff." _Colonel Hastings' voice was immediately recognizable, however the tone of uncertainty was unusual for her. _"We're at a loss as how to advise on this one, except to say that we're certain that we need to enter that space in order to fulfill this mission. We do agree that it is probably safe to follow the instructions located on that access panel, however we recommend that you be sure to position yourself such that you're not in the way of the hatch when the pressure equalizes. Otherwise proceed with all due caution. McAuliff, Out."_

Well. That left the decision squarely in CARIE Scarlet's anodized lap. It was then that Scarlet advised Gold that she was about to equalize the pressure via the emergency panel. As suggested by Colonel Hastings, Miss Scarlet took a position that had her laying to the right of the great door, but with her head and upper extremities where she could manipulate the controls of the emergency panel.

Scarlet began to open the panel when she realized that this was, perhaps, the first time in history that a human had deferred to an AI cybernetic entity in the decision making process. It would be a pity if she marred that occasion by allowing herself to be destroyed in the process.

Scarlet followed each of the instructions to the letter, finally reaching in behind the panel to find a twenty centimeter long handle. Without fanfare, she rotated the arm ninety degrees, and was immediately rewarded with a moderate vibration through the floor of the ship as the air inside the compartment vented into the Mercurian night. The out rush took a full thirty seconds before the rumbling abated. As the vibration ended, Scarlet arose to check the pressure flag. The mechanical flag, not requiring any electrical power, had now flipped completely to the green arc.

As she did, Scarlet ensured that her data storing window was open and that she was completely documenting the events as they transpired. Certainly, these events would be recorded for posterity. And in the unfortunate circumstance that something went wrong, the scientists at USLI-Sheppard would have some insight as to why it went bad.

Nonetheless. Scarlet moved back to the massive hatch. As she did, she leaned into the weight of the door with her own mass, and was rewarded with movement. Slowly, at first, then with increasingly effortless ease. She pushed the door completely to its 180 degree stops, and then she entered the space. She switched from visible light scanning to low-level night vision scanning. Her own spot lights would be too weak to see anything within the great space under these conditions, however the light-amplification of her built-in night vision scanner would more than make up for the lack of any ambient light.

And for her efforts, Scarlet was rewarded with the panorama of a vast engineering plant. The open area of the compartment was easily the size of a moderate-sized aircraft hangar, yet it was completely filled with a machine, the likes of which she had never seen in any direct or researched observation.

Back on the _McAuliff, _Annette Hastings and Hector Arrelano sat on the edge of their seats in the control pod. Both were glued to the monitors in front of them, both of them unable to move for fear of missing whatever might come next. That it was all being digitally recorded mattered not…that they saw it as it happened made all the difference in the world.

As Scarlet entered the space, she was immediately aware of the catwalk under her metallic feet. It was a grate-like structure, and apparently ran around the upper level of this compartment. As she had approached the compartment from amidships, she had been constantly traveling upwards, as the aft end of the ship was itself above the floor of the ground outside. Scarlet then scanned upwards, looking to the ceiling of the compartment. There, dangling from delicate fixtures in the overhead, were long-ago darkened light fixtures, leaning precariously to the forward of the department. Although Scarlet would be able to hold a relatively "vertical" stance if she chose to do so, it would have been apparent to anyone else in the space that the whole ship was angled precariously forward.

"_CARIE Scarlet, this is McAuliff. We see you in the main engineering space. Are you able to proceed around the compartment and give us a better view of the machinery in the central part of the space? And do you see any indication of reserve power anywhere, over?"_

CARIE scanned the walkway to both her left and right. To her right, the catwalk dropped to the floor, almost two floors lower, only a few feet away. So to the right was out. She then scanned to the left, and to her amazement, it appeared as thought the catwalk was intact at least seventy five percent of the way around the space. She turned to her left and began to move around. She set up a left-right-left scanning pattern, looking for any signs of controls, power, important technology or even books or documents laying about.

CARIE Scarlet had moved to the first turn in the catwalk when there was a sudden shift in the stability of the catwalk she was on. She stopped, then took a couple of paces backwards. The apparent instability seemed to abate, but as soon as she put her weight on the new section of catwalk, it began to sway.

She lowered herself to the floor, then attempted to assess the understructure of the catwalk. She switched from the low-level optics to her metallurgy scanners. Sure enough, she spotted the culprit. The brackets holding the catwalk to the wall were fatigued. As a matter of fact, she could see the fasteners that held the catwalk in place actually pulling out of the wall. It was as if the metal itself had simply split open and allowed the rivets to fall out. It was apparent that CARIE wasn't going any farther without some form of descending gear in order to get there. Mercury's low gravity might allow for a Herculean leap from the bowels of the ship to safety, but then too, it might not. Scarlet's safety protocol intervened and she retraced her steps out of the space.

This ship wasn't going anywhere.

As Scarlet tuned to head back towards the hatch that she had labored so to get open, she noticed that it had swung back, albeit slightly, towards the closed position. As it did, she scanned an object lying behind the door. She scanned first for signs of energy, yet found none. She then switched back to her high-luminosity lights. There, in the darkness behind the door, was what appeared to be a body. What piqued Scarlet's curiosity was that this body was like hers, metal and 'human' appearing only in the general placement of extremities,, head and torso. She pushed stepped forward a few steps more, then pushed the great door another meter away from the object lying on the floor.

Scarlet kneeled slightly to observe the object, which was lying 'face' down. She extended her own right arm to the object and then rolled it towards her. As she did, the 'face' of another metallic being, much like herself, rolled to it's back with a sudden 'klump' and a scattering of dust and debris. Across the trunk of the automaton was painted a red "slash", and that trunk was riddled with a dozen small holes. There was evidence of long-since dried fluids of some kind on the floor and bulkhead where the large robot had laid, and there was a thick layer of dust and debris across it's backside and shoulders.

What ever fate had befallen this creature, it had been many millennia since it had happened. Had it fallen defending this ship, or had it been destroyed trying to take it?

Questions, questions, questions.


	7. Chapter 7

CHAPTER TEN

_The "Situation Room"_

_The White House_

_Washington, D.C._

_21:32 UTC 03 September 2093_

"Are you absolutely certain, Colonel? Over" President Eleanor McReavis knew she should have taken the opportunity to ask more than a one-sentence question as soon as she said it. It was now going to be ten minutes or more until the transmission made the round trip from Earth, to the _Christa McAuliff_, and back to her.

She turned back to the table of military officers and civilian advisors behind her. With her was National Security Advisor Aaron Evans, Chief of Aerospace Forces Warren Blakely, and Secretary of Defense Caroll Young. On the wall monitors were General Jim Stevens and Doctor Kim Li Park, both on the moon. It was 4:30pm on Thursday in Washington, and she was glad she'd been able to catch some of her senior chief advisors before they could get on the road for the long weekend, although she knew Stevens and Park weren't going anywhere.

"Gentlemen…Doctor Park…if I understood Colonel Hastings correctly, this derelict is larger than any six of our supercarriers put together, yet potentially has a drive system on it that can send it between stars in…in the blink of an eye…?!?"

It was Admiral Blakely that replied. "Yes Madam President. We have reviewed the video that the AI's on the surface sent back, and the engineering plant for the main drive appears to be hundred's-of-times times larger than those found on the smaller craft found near Greece in 2032. The machinery for this drive takes up three football fields, and that's just the main part of the drive. That doesn't include power, navigation, controls, and who knows what else we can't see or understand. The ship…" he fumbled with some papers in front of him for a moment "…called _Galactica, _appears to be over a kilometer in length and may be between a quarter to a third of that a-beam at these pods."

The Admiral pulled an oversized photo from the pile in front of him. The picture was grainy, and only showed the ship from a low angle, well beyond the bow of the great ship looking aft along it's midline. The rise of debris at the bow obscured almost half the length of the ship at that angle, but the width of the two smaller pods was apparent even though the front end of both of those were likewise buried in rubble.

"I guess it's a good thing this monster didn't land in Manhattan, eh?" Admiral Blakely said to no one in particular.

Colonel Hastings' voice suddenly interrupted the ongoing conversation. "Yes Madam President. Both CARIE's have performed a thorough search of the engineering spaces. There were four main sublight engines on the ship, similar to those found on the smaller ships found on Earth, but immense in size. This thing is huge. It easily takes up the aft fourth of the ship. Unfortunately there's no way to operate any of the systems since there's no power available. I've instructed the AI's to either locate a central computer bank and it's core, or a central library, or both. If there's any way that we can harvest data from her, we'll find it."

The President sat back in her chair and turned to the monitor on the wall. "Doctor Park, are we as certain about the danger of the approaching daylight on Mercury? I mean, do we know for certain what the conditions on the surface are going to be?"

"Yes, Madam President. The daylight surface temperatures will be almost one thousand degrees Fahrenheit. The CARIE's are built to withstand temperatures only to about five hundred degrees, and only for a brief time. If we leave them in place, not knowing if that ship can adequately protect them, they will certainly fail within an hour of exposure to daylight conditions, without question."

The President sat back in her high-topped seat and turned to the officers behind her. "So folks…where do we go from here? Admiral Blakely, how much longer can we leave the CARIE's on the surface and still extract them safely?"

The Admiral leaned forward to look through some papers in front of him, only to have Dr. Park beat him to the punch. "Only eleven hours, Madam President. After that, it's doubtful they could get back to the drop ship, re-board and launch in time."

Doctor Kim's voice was still echoing through the room when Colonel Hastings' voice broke through the speakers once again. "_You're kidding me…?!?!" _Her voice was both excited and disbelieving. There was a small pause as the Lunar and Earthside members of the three-way conversation were suddenly silenced by the outburst from the usually stoic Colonel.

"_Madam President, The AI's are sending us flash traffic! Stand-by one!" _

Suddenly there was a pin-drop silence in both the White House Situation Room and the conference room at USLI-Sheppard.

Everyone sat transfixed as the video from the inside of the _McAuliff_ re-focused from Colonel Hastings to Major Arrelano. The major appeared very animated and excited. He rose slightly from his seat, moving forward to get a closer look at the screen in front of him. He then stood abruptly, clenched his right fist as if grabbing a fistful of gold, then brought his elbow to his waist in a gleeful, abrupt, boyish taunt. "_YES! That's it! We hit the damn Lottery!" _he exclaimed.

Just then Colonel Hastings, as almost equally gleeful, remembered who they were in a three-way conference call with, and whispered words of temperament to the excited Marine.

Just as abruptly as he had stood, the Major re-took his seat and turned to face the camera. The occasionally fluttering picture sometimes made it difficult to appreciate some facial features, but even from fifty million miles away, all of the correspondents could see the young major blushing. "I beg your pardon, Madam President, but you are _not _going to believe this! The AI's have _found the central library core! _And it's _intact!" _

The President turned back to the table behind her. "OK, Mr. Evans. Pretend that I'm a career politician without a clue as to what this means. English, please…?!?!"

Aaron Evans turned more directly towards the President from his own monitor screen, a smile on his face that a jack-hammer couldn't chisel off. "What it means, Madam President…" he said taking a deep breath, "…is that we may very well have the key to unlocking the secrets of their star drive, not to mention any one of hundreds, if not thousands of other revelations about their culture…where they came from, how they got here, and perhaps most importantly, _what happened to them and that ship_!"

The President turned back to the monitor screens behind her. She could see Doctor Park on the Moon leaning in towards her own monitor, a look of both astonishment and gleeful passion on her face. On board the _McAuliff, _both Major Arrelano and Colonel Hastings were glued to their own monitors, each excitedly bouncing their feet and giving each other a "high five".

The President watched with careful consideration for a moment, realizing that this unorthodox breech of decorum while in a three-way teleconference with the President of the United States was tempered by the knowledge that this was probably the scientific find of the century…Hell, for the millennium! And as she sat there, she glanced to the digital clocks over the monitors. There were a dozen of them on the wall, each for a major city around the world, plus the Greenwich Mean Time clock. She watched as the digital seconds counted up…fifty-five…fifty-six…fifty-seven…fifty-eight…fifty-nine…and then zeros as the clock rolled over to the next full minute. Suddenly she was painfully aware that time was moving on, and with each passing second, there was less of it to use.

"Doctor Park, Colonel Hastings…I'm suddenly reminded that one of the reasons we met here today was to discuss harvesting this ship's technology, but I am also reminded that we now only have ten hours and…" she looked back to the notes on the pad in front of her "…twenty-five minutes until we lose our window of opportunity to return the AI's safely. Isn't that correct?"

The mood in the Situation Room suddenly sobered as did the video coming from the Moon, only three light seconds away. Doctor Park then turned to face her camera directly, still smiling, but also more cognizant of with whom she was speaking. "Yes, Madam President. You're quite correct. But with this discovery, I fear we have a bigger problem."

"And that is, Doctor?" the President asked.

"Well, Ma'am. The CARIEs are a tight fit on the drop ship as it is. If that core is anything like our supercomputers or similar systems, it's a fairly large piece of hardware." The doctor paused for a moment. "A really _big_ piece of hardware, Ma'am…" she said, hoping that her stressing of the word big hit home.

The President leaned forward, he look more earnest now. "And what is the point we're getting to, Doctor Park?"

Kim Li Park thought to answer the president immediately, but then stopped. She then leaned across her console and flipped a switch. Suddenly the three-way conference call was now just between Washington and USLI-Sheppard. "Madam President, I'm doing this on the fly, so please forgive me…" The return to situational sobriety was a sudden and painful one.

"We've got a problem, Ma'am…Actually, a couple. First of all, time. We can't stop the clock so we're stuck with what we've got. Secondly, we can't formulate a complete plan until the AI's send us the mechanical specifications of that core anyway. I assume they are sending that information to Colonel Hastings on the _McAuliff_ now."

"I'm not a scientist, but I understand that much already, Doctor" the President interrupted. "Please tell me something I don't know…"

"Yes Ma'am. My point is, that if we want to get that core off the Mercurian surface before _this_ sunrise, and _assuming_ it will fit in the drop ship at all, we may have to leave one or both of the AI's on the surface."

There was a longer-than-usual pause before the President answered. "OK, Doctor…So we have to leave them behind. The problem with that is…?"

The doctor was quick to reply this time. "The problem is that while they may be _artificial _intelligence entities, they are, nonetheless, intelligent! We will, in essence, be asking them to commit suicide. Or at the very least submit to six months of blistering hot solitude. Remember…they are "awake" 24/7. They don't sleep."

The President's tone became a bit-more stern. "But they _are_ machines, are they not, Doctor? They are _programmed_ by humans to do what we bid of them…or did I miss something along the way?"

Dr. Park leaned into the monitor slightly. "Madam President, they are aware of what we would be directing them to do. Call it suicide…call it 'termination of function', or whatever you care to call it. The result is the same!"

Just as Dr. Park's words passed, Colonel Hastings' voice came through the speakers in both the Situation Room and at USLI-Sheppard. "Madam President, CARIE Gold informs me that they believe the core can be isolated and removed from the ship. There's one catch. One of them will have to remain behind, but they believe they have a plan. Stand by for further, Ma'am…"

The President looked over her shoulder at SecDef Caroll Young with a quizzical look. "Caroll…can these things actually anticipate and plan?" He turned to one of the Naval attaché's for an answer.

President McReavis took a few seconds to size up her Secretary of Defense. Caroll Young wasn't a career politician like she was. Only two months before taking his present job, he had been General Caroll Young, Commandant of the United States Marine Corps.

It was during her first term as President that then General Young had been on a "press the flesh" tour of the 55th Marine Expeditionary Unit in Libya. The dictatorship of old Libya had been long-ago deposed by moderates and had re-established diplomatic relationships with the United States. However the pro-western government of Tripoli still had to defend itself against the ever-present Islamic hardliners that continued to harass every pro-democracy government in Asia and Africa for the last century. During a blustery sandstorm at the MEU's base near the old Wheelus Air Force base, insurgents attacked the Americans and their Libyan counterparts. General Young not only took personal command of the ground force, he manned the forward CP.

During that attack, then General Young grabbed a grenade that had landed between him and the young Lance Corporal next to him and flung it back towards the attackers. In the process, the General also threw himself over the same Marine, protecting the junior warrior from shrapnel from the close-detonating weapon and took a considerable amount of the blast himself. After the firefight, they found four dead insurgents less than five meters away from the CP, killed by the same grenade they'd lobbed into the CP only seconds before. The General's actions stopped the attacks, saved the younger trooper's life, and earned him the Congressional Medal of Honor.

The General later stated that he could care less about the tribute itself. It was the fact that every Marine in the CP that had witnessed the act had signed the petition for the award that meant more to him than anything. The day after he left Walter Reed Hospital, the Chief of Naval Operations told him to report to the Pentagon within the hour. Believing himself about to get a reaming for placing himself in such jeopardy, he was shocked to walk into the conference room to be greeted by the CNO, a dozen Senators and a phalanx of reporters. In the middle of the throng was his wife and President Eleanor McReavis. "General…I am holding a petition in my hands from seventeen Marines who basically told me they _dared_ me to "just say no" to what I am about to read! Stand at attention, please…" Although the General had been told "…there's something in the wings", to hear his name and "Congressional Medal of Honor" in the same sentence was overwhelming.

The President finished the citation, then took the Medal from an aide and turned to the general. Although the general was what many might call an "average" sized man, next to the President's five foot even frame, he was almost a giant.

As the General bowed slightly to permit the petite President to place the award over his head, President McReavis allowed the soldier to resume his position, and then _she _saluted _him_. As he returned the Honor, the President said "Now General, I have a more daunting task for you…" Little did he know just _how_ 'daunting' it would be!

The President was suddenly brought back to the present by the Secretary's deep baritone. "Yes Ma'am…Given any mission, they can act autonomously to achieve a pre-determined goal to a certain outcome."

The tall-back leather chair at the head of the table almost seemed to swallow her at times, but she sat back for a moment, her left hand across her chin.

The President then turned to the screens behind her and stood. "Dr. Park, Colonel Hastings, I'll leave it to you two on how to best coordinate this, but that core has to be off the surface of Mercury and enroute to the _McAuliff_ before local sunrise."

She then turned back to the table behind her. "Thank-you, Gentlemen…" was all she said as she left the room.

President of the United States or not, she didn't want to see the look on Colonel Hastings' face when her order arrived.


	8. Chapter 8

CHAPTER 11

_On The Surface of Mercury_

_06:50UTC 04 September 2093_

The daylight terminator was moving quickly towards the drop ship as CARIE Gold and CARIE Scarlet arrived from the derelict. The library computer core wasn't a heavy object, especially in the minimal gravity of Mercury, however it was a physically large and cumbersome thing to manhandle. Removing it from its station in the ship hadn't been problematic, however getting it _out_ of the ship and into the open had.

Their orders had been sweet and simple: "Remove the library core from the derelict and evacuate it to the _McAuliff_ with all due haste. Evaluate evacuation options for either or both AI's. Consider survival options for remaining AI within _Galactica_ derelict pending recovery mission on next nightfall. Further orders to follow".

The message was brief and unambiguous, however it was the first time Colonel Hastings had sent a command message via keyboard, rather than voice or video. Both Scarlet and Gold noted the variation although they were uncertain as to its relevance.

But right now, neither Miss Scarlet nor Miss Gold were concerned with such things. Their priority was their orders, and that priority was the core. They would carry out their mission as directed.

The two AI's had had two days to map the corridors of the great derelict prior to this, and it had been Miss Scarlet that eventually found her way to the inside of the very same emergency hatch that the Minnie rover had located so many months ago. Some dialogue was exchanged with Colonel Hastings back on the _McAuliff_ about how best to proceed. Unlike the hatch going into the engineering space, however, there was no manual override for this door. The only recourse was to jettison the hatch.

Scarlet found the control panel and quickly assimilated the instructions. She activated the charges, took refuge behind a bulkhead a few meters away and folded herself into her safety mode. Thirty seconds later, however, the hatch had not yet blown. Scarlet's initial assessment was that the charges were obviously corrupted or inert after centuries of neglect and exposure to space. What she hadn't been programmed to consider was that the frame of reference for what constituted a "second" for the ship's builders might not be a "second" to hers. Just as she looked over the top of the bulkhead, the massive door blew outwards and landed 100 meters away in the edge of the berm created by the hulk's arrival.

Thankfully the force of the explosion went outward, not that there was enough atmosphere to permit any backpressure anyway. There was a brief rush of debris and dust as what little trapped air quickly escaped into the night sky.

That had been the easy part. Now they had to load the core on the drop ship.

Scarlet and Gold had both parked their carriages outside the great ship when they first entered it and maneuvered inside it in their bipedal mode. It only made sense since the passageways inside the hulk were all angled, and in some cases, missing. They wouldn't have been able to get around with the carriages anyway.

Now outside the great ship and needing to transport the core, Scarlet and Gold had rejoined the carriages and placed themselves end-to-end. The result was to make a small platform between their respective heads in which to carry the core. Scarlet wound up having to travel the distance from _Galactica_ back to the drop ship facing reverse, her arms helping to support the core. Gold's arms likewise supported the core from the other end, but she was also the eyes of the two on the way back to the ship.

And it wasn't as if the trip required any extra compute cycles to navigate back to the drop ship…They simply followed the tracks they made coming in. Ironically, a short length of the trip paralleled the tracks that Minnie had made coming in. No…getting back to the drop ship wasn't the issue. How they were going to get the core in and then themselves too, was.

As they stopped at the boarding ramp to the small ship, CARIE Gold dismounted her carriage, being careful to keep a firm grip on the core as Scarlet did the same thing. But just as they did, their communication routine went active, and they both opened a new window to receive the incoming message.

Colonel Hastings was in the center of the screen and appeared sullen. Although neither of the AI's experienced emotions, per se, they were programmed to "read" human emotions and it was apparent that the Colonel was under a considerable amount of stress.

"Ladies…For the last ten hours I've had Clem, the Central Lunar Mainframe, running various options on how to proceed from this point. The President has made it clear that getting the core off of the Mercurian surface is of the highest priority, and I have to concur. The impact to all of humanity is incalculable. Clem, however, has been unable to recommend a certain plan of action, so I guess it's down to me."

The Colonel turned her head away from the monitor briefly, and in that moment both AI's could see another person's arm extend into the picture and grasp the Colonel's arm. It was decidedly male, and they assumed it must be Major Arrelano. She looked at whoever it was, smiled and nodded gently to them, then turned back to the viewer, her resolve seemingly improved over the course of those few seconds.

"CARIE Scarlet, I have new orders for you." The Colonel's voice was wavering slightly. "Once the core is safely loaded on the drop ship, you will return to the _Galactica_ and commence a stem-to-stern investigation of the shipwreck. You will begin mapping all accessible spaces and passageways. Where able, you will determine what artifacts can be evacuated, giving priority to medical and space flight technologies."

The Colonel turned away from the screen again for a moment and leaned towards whoever it was that had been sitting next to her a moment a go. She sat back up and had some papers in her hand. "We estimate we will be able to re-establish comlink on-or-about two zero niner four zero four two with a recovery date of two zero niner four zero six four." There was another long pause as the Colonel seemed to shuffle the papers in front of her a bit aimlessly, her eyes avoiding the cameras.

"I'm sorry to drop this on you at the last moment, Scarlet, but I know you'll be able to carry out this mission effectively. Your initial programming and purpose was deep space exploration, and now it seems we've come full circle. I don't mind telling you that I have my reservations about this course of action, but if it weren't absolutely crucial, I wouldn't agree to this."

The Colonel paused, looked away once more, and then turned back to the camera. "CARIE Gold, you will return with the drop ship and the core. You will leave your carriage behind for Scarlet to use as a spare if needed and for additional digital storage. You will upload any recently saved data and bring it with you prior to Mercurian departure. The _McAuliff_ will rendezvous with you approximately 18 hours post lift-off. I am downloading the orbital trajectories to the drop ship now and you can access and review them when ready to launch. As you receive this message, you have…two hours and three minutes until you have to be off the surface. You may launch at will, however, as the nav computer will compensate for your launch time. Earliest departure is advisable."

The Colonel sat up a bit straighter in her chair and her tone became a bit softer.

"Ladies, five days ago I told you I was proud of you. But 'proud' doesn't even begin to express how I feel right now. You've both performed beyond my wildest dreams. Thank-you both…Acknowledge when received…_McAuliff, _out."

CARIE Gold looked back at Scarlet. "It would seem that Colonel Hastings is experiencing some regret over this mission. I do not understand. She is correct when she stated that this is the mission that we were conceived for."

Scarlet didn't know how to respond. Human emotions were a complicated and non-linear expression. Perhaps it was better that she didn't understand. But for the moment, getting the core aboard was the priority.

Neither AI could have foreseen the ease with which the core was loaded and stowed. It only took them fifteen minutes to maneuver the bulky package into place, no doubt the lack of significant gravity preventing any mishaps. Moments later, CARIE Gold was aboard, her carriage now under remote control by Scarlet.

Scarlet backed away from the drop ship, her companion AI's carriage in tow. She only got a hundred meters away when she stopped and turned back towards the drop ship. As she watched, she saw the ship's identification lights came on as did the external spot lights. She could then detect the increasing energy welling in it's bowels as the thruster engines spun up. There was an abrupt blast of dust and debris at the base of the ship's four thrusters, then suddenly the drop ship was headed up.

CARIE Scarlet watched as the drop ship ascended rapidly. For the first few seconds it was almost invisible, but as it lifted into the approaching sunrise it became the second most brilliant object in the sky, second only to the sun who's light it was reflecting. But then it receded rapidly, and in seconds it was gone.

From the drop ship, CARIE Gold monitored the trajectory as the drop ship lifted off from the Mercurian surface. As she did, Gold switched the drop ship's external cameras to watch aft. She saw the same billowing dust cloud that Scarlet saw, and thought she could see her companion AI at the edge of it. Suddenly she thought to send Scarlet a final message.

"May deus existo vobis."


	9. Chapter 9

CHAPTER 12

_Aboard the Colonial Fleet Battlestar Galactica_

_On the surface of Mercury_

_13:27UTC 21 January 2094_

CARIE Scarlet sat in the middle of the space that held the great derelict's star drive. "FTL", or 'faster-than-light', the Colonials had called it, although that was a misnomer. As she had learned, the system didn't actually 'drive' anything. It opened a vortex that allowed the great ship to exploit an almost limitless number of trans-dimensional anomalies through space. It would take a decade alone to work out all of the dog-legs this ship had taken until her arrival in the Sol system, but Scarlet believed that it would be possible, one day, for humankind to find its true ancestral home from the ship's navigational computer logs.

And as part of her efforts to comply with her orders, Scarlet had dutifully removed the ship's navigation computer core and re-located it to the space next to the open hatch in engineering. Indeed, she had spent many of her hours locating books, manuals and any recorded archives she could locate. Scarlet had computed the number of round-trips it would take for a single drop ship operating robotically to carry off all that she'd harvested, and the numbers were in the scores. Hopefully Colonel Hastings will have prepared for this eventuality, she mused.

Scarlet had not come by this information easily, either. She spent her first month inside the _Galactica_ in nearly complete darkness…at least in terms of _visible_ light. It had taken her that long to slowly work her way from the engineering spaces in the lower aft section of the ship to the ship's bridge. She worked forward, then topside, cataloging every space, confinement and passageway along the way. And when she finally made her way to the bridge, she found it was in total chaos. Every last bit of equipment or loose gear had flown forward as the great derelict came to its inglorious and abrupt end. There was broken glass, computer terminals, conduits, hardware, and even what looked like a bathtub, all thrown to the front of the space. It was a forensics nightmare.

It was also by no significant chance that CARIE had come to spend the majority of her down time in the engine spaces of the ship. It was the lowest place in the ship therefore it was surrounded by the most dense part of the ship's shielding. Indeed, her sensors often detected surface temperatures outside the derelict at over 800 degrees, while her systems loafed along at a paltry 70 degrees in the bowels of the ship. Truly, the Colonials had engineered a magnificent ship.

As it turned out, the bridge was as far forward as she could travel anyway. The forward quarter of the _Galactica_ had so forcefully burrowed itself into the Mercurian soil that there was no way to proceed any farther forward. Whatever other stories the ship may have had to tell from that point on were buried under hundreds of thousands of metric tons of rock and soil. Even a whole platoon of CARIE's wouldn't be able to un-earth the mysteries buried in that berm any time soon.

But Scarlet had dutifully recorded and mapped all that she could, and was about to leave the bridge to head for lower levels when she eyed something quite unusual…An occasional spark jumped from a panel that was at the very rear of the compartment. As she had in so many other spaces, she scanned the surrounding panels and found the now-familiar writing. She opened a translation window and entered the text. The results were instantaneous: DAMAGE CONTROL~AUXILIARY POWER. It took her another week to trace the system, but trace it she did, and she found that the spark was coming from an array of solar panels on the top of the great ship. It wouldn't permit a great deal of operation, but before long, the Terran AI had low-level lights on in a few of the passageways. It wasn't much, but at least now she could schedule back some of her own power consumption for illumination in those un-powered passageways and reserve it for navigation routines to keep from getting lost in the great behemoth..

All the while, CARIE's internal clock had been counting down the hours until comlink would be reestablished with the _McAuliff._ Colonel Hastings had indicated that they expected to be able to contact her on 2094/042, and it was 2094/021 now. That only left twenty-one more days to explore. Regardless of what she might be able to uncover within the bowels of this great derelict, it wouldn't do for her to miss that window. _Artificial_ intelligence or not, she still appreciated that this was the first time in history that a cybernetic entity had been employed on such a mission, and she would not want the mission to conclude in failure on her account. Nor did she care to become non-operable without reasonable expectation of repair.

But right now she had something available to her that she hadn't had before: time. Scarlet decided that she would begin cataloging the contents of the various textbooks she had found and to arrange them systematically. It was logical that she be able to present a list of priority items to the Colonel upon her return, therefore she would begin to catalog those archives she had already harvested. And first among them was a large, black book with gold lettering on the cover and angled corners. Strange, she thought…None of the books or documents she found had squared corners…How bizarre.

She read the cover of the massive journal:

SHIP'S MASTER JOURNAL

BSG 75

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA

William Adama, Commanding

Opened: YKb 3512

Closed:

CARIE Scarlet considered the massive book carefully. Most noteworthy was the lack of a closing date on the cover. Surely an indication that the crew had abandoned ship under duress or had been taken from her forcibly. Or perhaps they left expecting to return, only to have other circumstances prevent their return? Maybe the pages within would leave some clue.

Carefully, she lifted the cover of the massive journal and began to read. Slowly, at first, then ever quicker as she became accustomed to the handwriting and the colloquialisms of the author. There were a great many terms and phrases that she didn't understand, but then that understanding would come with time.

The bits and pieces came slowly. As she had discovered earlier, these people called themselves "Colonials". Their civilization had existed for at least thirty-five hundred years before the date of the journal, the years of which were made in honor of someone or someplace called "Kobol", she wasn't sure. Certainly the central library core that she and Gold had evacuated to the _McAuliff_ would have historical archives saved within it that would.

This great ship had been created to defend the Colonies, twelve of which were named in the great journal. Miss Scarlet noted with some interest that each of those worlds had names that were very similar to the major constellations known to modern man. Colonel Hastings' presumption that this ship carried the forefathers of modern man to Earth was correct. Truly, mankind was descended from the stars!

CARIE continued to read on. The first four and a half years of the journal were enlightening to her, however the tale that the author wove was one of a mundane and structured life. These Colonials were conflicted beings, she mused, in that they had a great fear of the beings they called "Cylons", however they were also almost apathetic about the likelihood of having to actually battle these beings again. How sad to live in fear for so many years of a foe they'd not seen in so many more years. Certainly, it must have been a terrible drain on these people to keep warships such as this in service to fight a foe long vanished.

Scarlet carefully lifted each page as she turned them, mindful that her mechanical hands could easily shred the massive book without any significant effort. Had anyone been watching her from a distance, they might almost think she was respectful of the great text as she progressed through the pages. Finally she came to the middle of the journal and suddenly found herself in a portion of the book that had many photographs sealed within the pages! Here they were, these Colonials, and _yes, _they _were human!_

The first few pages of photographs were of the great ship in some sort of docking facility. The pictures seemed to have been taken while the Galactica had been undergoing re-fit or overhaul. Many of the pictures were dedicated to the star drive as it was maintained. The roof of the great ship was opened to space, and there were several mechanical arms and smaller machines lowering the massive plant into the ship. Several space-suited men were tethered to the device itself, and the machine dwarfed them.

The next pages were of life in the ship itself. The Commander, a man named Adama, and his second, a man named Colonel Tigh, were stern and rugged looking men. Certainly they were men of great responsibility, and CARIE noted that they looked not unlike photographs she had seen of Earth's own military leaders. Scarlet searched for a more accurate adjective, and could only come up with 'authoritarian'. Most appropriate, she thought, for men in their position.

The pages lapsed back into the graceful script that she now knew to belong to this William Adama, with occasional entries in his absence by this Colonel Tigh. Scant mention was made of the enigmatic Cylons, whom the Colonials had obviously not had contact with in many decades.

Scarlet continued on. The mundane entries were occasionally interrupted by reports of missions to outlying posts to quell civil unrest or investigate smugglers. The great ship had even been sent to remove illegal settlers in areas close to the demarcation line between Colonial space and that reserved for these Cylons.

CARIE Scarlet methodically read each page, committing same to a file for later download. Certainly, it would be a horrific loss if this journal was lost in the process of transfer back to the _McAuliff._ And once Scarlet had a positive comlink with the humans, she would be able to download her findings even before boarding the drop ship.

As she flipped the pages, she came once again to a section of the great archive dedicated to photographs. And to her great surprise, the lead page was simply titled "Cylons". Finally, she would have an opportunity to see what it was about these Cylons that so terrified the Colonials that they created so massive and deadly a warship as the _Galactica._

CARIE began to flip the next page, anxious to see what it was that these humans feared so intensely. As she did, she realized that she was suddenly experiencing a surge of conflicting inputs. Her usually logical and ordered processor was now awash with an indeterminate alarm of general caution. She stopped for a moment to run a diagnostic subroutine, but was unable to determine a cause for the non-specific warnings. She scanned her immediate area, but determined that she was alone, and there was no impending energy flares, radiation leaks, or external threats.

CARIE dismissed the random inputs as an environmental anomaly. No doubt, a previously undocumented magnetic fluctuation between Mercury and the sun which loomed only thirty six million miles away. Nonetheless, she would remain on alert for any potential problems.

Having dismissed the random inputs, Scarlet returned to the job at hand, and flipped the next page of the journal.

As the page fell open, CARIE Scarlet suddenly experienced an interruption of all inputs except for visual and critical internal systems.

On the page before her was a three-view drawing of the feared enemy…the creature these humans were both so terrified of and held in such vile contempt…the Cylons.

And they looked almost exactly like her.


	10. Chapter 10

CHAPTER 13

Aboard the United States Space Research Vessel

_Christa McAuliff_

_Parking Orbit Between The Orbits of Venus and Mercury_

_13:16UTC 11 February 2093_

The _Christa McAuliff_ coasted effortlessly in a solar orbit half way between the Venusian and Mercurian orbits. Invisible to the naked eye, but clearly discernable on radar, was Mercury, only six million miles away.

Colonel Annette Hastings was having a hard time restraining her excitement. As a matter of fact, she knew she had to work hard at maintaining her professional demeanor. She had been a part of the CARIE program since before it _was_ the CARIE program. She had started out as a programmer for robotic warfare drones almost twenty-five years ago. And now, here she was, at the focal point of artificial intelligence.

Back on Earth, every scientist that considered him or herself even marginally expert in computer technology had been vying for a spot to get their hands on _Galactica's _central computer library core for the last four months. Even as Hastings prepared to bring CARIE Scarlet home, at least three separate computer forensics teams were attempting to unlock the mysteries of the _Galactica's _central library core back on the moon_. _As tight as security was, word of its existence still made the rounds, even within the intelligence community. But even as word of the enigmatic core's existence made those rounds, word of the _Galactica's _existence still remained a closely guarded secret. Annette Hastings gave that bit of irony some thought, but then put it away for later consideration. Now was not the time.

"Pod, this is the bridge, you are cleared to begin your star fix." The voice on the intercom startled the colonel almost to a quick. Sitting next to her was Major Hector Arellano, now assigned to her on a semi-permanent basis as assistant mission coordinator, and he saw her abrupt response to the call.

"Catch you by surprise, did they, Colonel?" he mused.

"Just get that star plot started, _Major!"_ The crimson shade on the Colonel's face told half the story. The other half was the knowing wink that Arellano gave her as she up-righted herself at her station after the abrupt call. Annette Hastings had come to love that little eccentricity between her and the Marine major. Of course, she had come to love him, too, in the months since their first trip together to this very same place in space.

Hector Arellano and Annette Hastings had become a "couple" in the way that many professionals do…Thrust together in arduous circumstances, they found that they were often each other's only accompaniment. In those hundreds of hours together, they had come to find that they shared more than just a zealousness for a job well done. And when the mission at hand is the opening of a whole new world of technology and science, who wouldn't be excited? It wasn't long before the excitement for the new worlds they were about to explore took on romantic overtones. And who wouldn't be excited? Afterall, they would be the first humans to see much of the new data from the _Galactica_ as CARIE Scarlet was rescued from the surface of Mercury.

Hastings thoughts began to drift again as she tried to imagine what new discoveries that her charge may have made in the last many months. Indeed, she had often wished that she had been able to stay on Mercury with Scarlet. It was an impossibility, she knew, but nonetheless, she was excited to be only hours away from welcoming home her cybernetic protégé. The discovery of the _Galactica_ notwithstanding, she was as equally excited that this was the first time independent AI had been employed for so crucial a task. Over a century of faith, devotion and research was about to pay off.

Arellano noted with gleeful satisfaction her return to the "here and now", and a smile curled his lips as he rested his forehead over the shroud that covered the starscope. "Bridge, Pod, request we roll 180 degrees and stabilize for reverse azimuth fix, please" he called.

A calm, professional female voice called back across the intercom and acknowledged the call. Within seconds, Arellano noted the starfield change, and just as quickly he had located the waypoints in space he needed to make exact fixes from their own position in space. Now it was time to put the _Galactica_ in the cross hairs. "Bridge, Pod, tally-ho on star fix. Request we roll port thirty-one degrees, pitch negative fifteen decimal three and open cargo bay doors direct for acquisition of Objective Alpha."

Within seconds, the same female voice had echoed back the maneuver requests, and shortly thereafter the _Christa McAuliff_ began a simultaneous left-hand roll and pitched nose down from her current attitude. The changes were relatively small, and just as quickly as the _McAuliff_ had begun to maneuver, she was again stopped, seemingly suspended against the spectacle of the Sun and the stars behind it. As they turned to find the distant orb, the massive cargo bay doors that sheltered the multi-mode telescope also parted and allowed the massive device to begin extending both it's optical and electronic apertures into the darkness.

"Main telescope on line, solar exclusion filters at one hundred percent." Hastings had found her professional demeanor again. Her tone was polite but insistent.

The Marine's fingers were only a split-second behind the Colonel's words as he tapped the appropriate icons on the telescope's control screen. "Telescope's ready for deployment, solar exclusion filters at one hundred percent. Star plot fixed and coordinates for Objective Alpha are entered. The cargo bay is opening and we'll have full focal length in thirty seconds. We have a tracking solution for both optical and electronic acquisition." he reported.

"Roger. Engage telescope for acquisition of Objective Alpha" called Hastings. Now was the moment of truth. Had CARIE Scarlet survived? For that matter, had the _Galactica_ survived it's six month pummeling by the radiation and magnetic eddies of the star only thirty six million miles away?

Colonel Hastings tapped a few keys on her keyboard then drew the headset microphone she was wearing closer to her lips, as if the extra centimeter or two might make the difference between CARIE Scarlet hearing her or not.

"Deploy the omni-directional antenna, Hector", she said. "I'll send our coordinates digitally and call her on voice so she can pin-point us. Should only take two minutes for her to spot us, then we can switch to narrowband." The colonel leaned in towards her console.

"CARIE Scarlet, CARIE Scarlet, this is _McAuliff_ on omni. Voice and data on Charlie One, beacon on Victor One, short count five, four, three, two, one…how copy, over." The colonel then sat back, knowing it was going to be a full minute or more until the signal had a chance to get to Mercury and Scarlet could reply. The colonel started to roll a pencil between her fingers as Major Arellano looked on.

Had there been a fly on the wall of the pod, it might have noted the extraneous tension in the pod. Both Arellano and Hastings were anxious for the safe recovery of CARIE Scarlet, but there was another, equally palpable tension in the air, and it had nothing to do with the mission…and _everything_ to do with the relationship that had blossomed between the two soldiers.

They were a unique couple…Arellano was Hastings' senior in years. Had Arellano not spent his early career as an enlisted man, he would probably be Hastings' senior in grade, too! He had at least eight years on her, yet those years as a Marine served him well. No one would be the wiser if he told anyone he was only in his thirties…Ten years ago!

For a colonel, Annette Hastings was a peculiarity in her own right. She had no sooner finished her doctoral thesis on artificial intelligence when she found herself being recruited by the Armed Forces. Promoted directly to captain from "day one", she had a jump on eighty-five percent of her peers. But unlike most professionals who were similarly recruited, Annette Hastings had one demand that confounded her recruiters…She wouldn't sign on unless the Army put her through the same basic officer training and leadership courses that any other officer candidate would have to complete…She would either _be_ an officer, or she'd be nothing.

And as Hector Arellano had found out over the last six months, Annette Hastings was a woman that put one-hundred percent into everything she tackled…Everything. It was probably that fact, and the fact that he was the only man who had ever been close enough to her to know the difference, that drew him so close to her.

The seconds ticked by.

Thirty seconds. Half way there, she thought.

Then sixty. Just a few seconds more.

Ninety seconds passed. No answer. Annette Hastings' pulse was rising and she was nervously tapping both her feet. She leaned forward, reaching for the transmit button for the radio to repeat the call. But just as her finger touched the button, there was a crackle in her headset.

It was brief, at first, and then a steady open squelch. Then she heard it! CARIE's homing beacon! "_Lock on beacon and set the high gain antenna_!" she called out excitedly.

"_She's alive, Hector! She's alive!" _The otherwise prim and proper Colonel Annette Hastings was now shouting like a schoolgirl, and Hector Arellano was relieved. But even before she had called out the orders to change antennas, he had already changed them over and the signal reached a crescendo in their headsets. The steady stream of data bursts and static was almost deafening.

Suddenly, there was a change in the tone of the bursts coming through the speaker. The signal, usually undecipherable to the human ear due to their randomness and rate of the bursts, suddenly took on a repetitive, almost haunting, cycle.

Just as suddenly, the smiles and laughter were gone from Annette Hastings's face. Her dark, almond eyes were as large as saucers and her jaw hung open. Hector Arellano could tell she was holding her breath.

"Annette, what's the matter…?" His question was almost a statement, blurted out of confusion.

"_That's the distress signal! _I programmed them to repeat the old-time distress signal 'SOS' rapidly when something was wrong as an alerting tone! Something's wrong!"

As abruptly as the digital tones had changed to the distress signal, they stopped, and suddenly the video screens in front of them began to fill with text. At the same time, CARIE Scarlet's voice could be heard over the speakers, repeating over-and-over the same message that was printing on the screens:

"_McAuliff, McAuliff, this is CARIE SCARLET. Radioactive emergency. Local minor coronal mass ejection swamped Objective Alpha. Remaining nuclear weapons in ships' stores going critical! Stay clear! Explosion imminent! " _Annette Hastings watched in disbelief as the message scrolled across her screen over-and-over, all-the-while Scarlet's relatively calm and strangely unemotional voice repeated the message verbally.

"Hector! We've got to get the drop ship to her _now! _We've got to evacuate her!"

The Marine spun around to the console located behind him. He tapped the screen to bring it on line, then tapped the "STATUS" button for the drop ship.

"It's fueled and ready to fly, but it will take a few minutes to clear the bay and depressurize!" His voice was almost as anxious as Hastings. Truth be known, he'd become as attached to the AI's as Hastings was, and his thoughts right now were to rescue Scarlet…Not preserve a resource.

"_Bridge, Mission Pod! We need to launch the drop ship ASAP! Scarlet's in trouble! Request emergency evac of the launch bay and prepare to launch!" _Hastings' voice was anxious and an octave higher than usual.

The pause between the pod's call an the bridge's response was but a few seconds, but suddenly every second was one second too many for Annette Hastings. She'd get out and push if it made any difference in how fast they moved.

"Pod, Bridge, the bay is clear, we are depress…_WHAT IN THE NAME OF GOD WAS THAT…?_" The voice from the speaker sounded incredulous.

Arellano and Hastings looked at each other, unable to appear any more shocked than what they were already, but wondering what could be wrong now. As their eyes met, Annette Hastings realized that the speakers carrying the audio from CARIE Scarlet was eerily silent.

"Pod, Bridge, Science Officer here!…_LOOK AT THE SUFACE!"_

Annette Hastings and Hector Arellano simultaneously changed the video source on their respective screens.

There, where the crosshairs of the telescope had pinpointed Objective Alpha, was a brilliant white plume. Even with the telescope in low resolution and set for a wide view, there was no mistaking the plume for anything other than what it was: a nuclear explosion.

Annette Hastings stood then banged her hands against the monitor.

"_Noooooooooooooooooooooo!"_

* * *

EPILOGUE

_On the Surface of Mercury_

_13:50 UTC 11 February 2094_

CARIE Scarlet watched as the debris cloud continued to rise hundreds of kilometers above her head and in all directions. The shadow of the ridge that she was behind prevented her from being directly impacted by the debris, but that was of little consequence now.

It hadn't been easy, locating the warheads and rigging them to detonate on so narrow a margin, but she'd managed to do it in the few days that she had left to her. Perhaps the humans would send a follow-on rover to investigate and try to recover any remains, but she'd been careful to try and camoflauge her tracks away from the great derelict. Also, she'd gone in the opposite direction than she had arrived. Since that was towards the daylight terminator, it was unlikely that she' be discovered anytime soon.

She dismounted her carriage, the _Galactica's _navigation computer core balanced precariously on it. She had traveled the distance with one arm helping to secure the device, the other holding the _Galactica's _ship's journal. She had thought to leave it in the derelict, to be incinerated when the weapons detonated, but then thought better of it. There was always the chance that the weapons wouldn't have detonated, and she might have become incapacitated out here, preventing her from recovering the great journal before the humans or one of her counterparts could recover it.

CARIE had chosen this site carefully. Afterall, she didn't want the humans to find her any time soon, however she didn't necessarily want them to _never_ find her. She knew that there would be a day and time that they would develop the technology to explore the inner-most planet themselves, but it wouldn't be any time soon.

She carefully removed the _Galactica's_ navigation computer core and placed it on the surface next to her carriage. She took a couple of large rocks and braced them against the core to prevent it from rolling away. She then double checked its position. Yes, it would be safe here, and would be shaded from the great star's energy when daytime once again came to this side of the planet. Hopefully, it would stay safe here long after her departure.

CARIE then sat down on the other side of the carriage and pulled the massive journal back into her lap. She once again flipped through the pages of the book carefully, pausing to study the diagrams and pictures of the Cylons that the ancient humans had so feared and reviled. As she continued to flip the pages slowly, she re-read the words of its author, Commander William Adama, as he had dutifully chronicled the events of the attacks on their worlds and the horrific loss of life.

CARIE couldn't help but find irony that she too, like her Cylon descendants, had been made by the hand of man. She had been conceived to do man's bidding, indeed, but unlike the Cylons, not for his menial or wanton pleasures. Not to fight his wars or to relieve him of those tasks that _ought _to be done by a man…No, she had been created for one for the greatest, altruistic needs of man. To discover and learn.

Perhaps, then, it was in that thought that CARIE Scarlet found herself most conflicted. For was it not her duty…her obligation…to take the knowledge of what had happened to the ancient humans and their own AI's back to Earth? Could she not be the means by which man and machine would find the means to avoid the horrific ends that had met the Colonial humans?

Even the Cylons themselves had found that they had perpetrated an act of genocide that was unprecedented. They had acted on old prejudices. They had acted callously. And when they found that even their allegedly unerringly perfect logic was anything but, at least some part of their own society sought to put things right. But whose 'right'? And to what end had their own civil war brought peace to the Cylon and Colonial worlds?

CARIE had spent countless hours researching human behavior. She had spent an even longer time reading ad re-reading the pages drafted in the hand of The Commander. The Colonials had come a long way since the loss of their homeworlds, but even in the waning days of their trek through space, their deepest anguishes, their deepest fears and prejudices had kept them scared and running.

Certainly, the world that Scarlet had known had its failings. She was well schooled in the barbarism of the Khans…the treachery of the Nazis and calculating of the Soviets. She also knew of the horrific practice of slavery that her own American ancestors had perpetrated, only to know that they had not only overcome the despicable act, but they had become the champions of human rights. Indeed, almost every corner of the world had overcome its fears and prejudices to become a world of peace and development.

CARIE paused on that thought…_HUMAN _rights…and then she again pondered the day she came to Mercury and the moments before they launched on from the _McAuliff. _Had not Colonel Hastings treated her with…_respect? _It was a difficult and irrational concept.

As she arrived at the closing pages of the ship's log, she read William Adama's last words, where he spoke of the cycle of repetition of the rise-and-fall of human civilization amongst the Colonies and the Twelve Worlds of Kobol. The ancient humans had come to a great reckoning, but only at the massacre of their worlds at the hands of their own creations.

Perhaps, then, this should be where _this_ cycle ends.

CARIE slid the thumb of her left hand into the access panel of her chest and then looked around her. The debris plume was still rising from the great derelict, and she could even see the tops of it beginning to follow the stream of the solar winds into deep space. She watched for a moment, knowing that right now, cameras would be looking down on her, wondering _why…_She then found the ring that dangled from her central power supply core in her chest cavity and pulled it straight out.

The open window suddenly went dark as two last lines of text rolled across it:

POWER FAILURE

END OF LINE.


End file.
